Falling for fig cake

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Cake-baking advice

Many people shy away from baking cakes because of the precision necessary to balance flour, butter and eggs -- let alone remove the cake from a tube pan unscathed.

"All cakes take time and patience," says Sonya Jones, baker and owner of Sweet Auburn Bread Co.

She advises home cooks who have trouble with poundcakes to keep making them: "They are very delicate. They take practice."

A mother's love of cakes

As a young couple starting married life during the Depression, Edith Flowers Kilgo's parents struggled to make ends meet. But no matter how little they had, they always wanted to share.

More times than not, those meals were followed with one of her mother's cakes. She loved trying all cake recipes, Kilgo told us, in part because her mother knew how much her husband adored them.

Kilgo told us about a number of fascinating cakes for which her mother was famous. We were especially intrigued by two -- Orange Slice Cake and Vanilla Wafer Cake -- because of the surprise ingredients they contained. Sonya Jones, the baker and owner of Atlanta's Sweet Auburn Bread Co., put them to the test -- with excellent results.

Learn to make a gluten-free feast

Jules Shepard, a gluten-free cooking instructor, returns to EarthFare in Raleigh on Sunday to teach how to cook a gluten-free Thanksgiving feast. (We've seen a lot of Shepard recently in the Triangle; her classes at EarthFare keep selling out.)

Shepard will teach how to make gluten-free and dairy-free homemade casseroles, pie crusts, pumpkin pie, dinner rolls and stuffing. Everyone who attends the class will receive a free copy of Shepard's 34-page Thanksgiving e-book full of recipes.

The class is from 2 to 4:30 p.m. It costs $40. To register, visit www.JulesGlutenFree.com or call 433-1390.

Rising sea level redefines N.C. coast

In North Carolina, global warming isn't a future worry. It's already lapping ashore.

Nags Head Mayor Renee Cahoon sees all the proof of climate change she needs at the end of Old Oregon Inlet Road. The street once led to rows of oceanfront houses. Now it ends suddenly in bulldozed piles of sand.

Some beach erosion occurs naturally, and development near the ocean tends to make it worse. But some scientists think erosion has grown more pronounced in recent years as the sea level has risen and storms increased. On some days, stretches of Nags Head have no dry beach, and visitors have to sit under the front-row houses at high tide. The resort that once thrived by the sea is being swallowed by it.

Winter fish yield full flavor

PELTIER CREEK--Although fishing is one of my favorite forms of diversion, over the years I have come to realize that it's not the fish that I seek but the environment that comes with the angler's world. It's the rippling of wave and current, breaking surf, shifting sands, the mirroring of sky, cloud and tree on black waters, the fragrance of fresh air, dank woods, moldering duff, and the sight of birds flitting among the trees, waterbugs skittering, turtles sunning themselves.

It's not that I have anything against catching fish, especially winter fish. Not many people are aware of the difference between winter and summer fish. Right now, the flavor of fish is at its very peak. None of that sulfur-aged taste nor the muddy flavor that comes with the warm water of summer.