Read Sitting in Bars with Cake: Lessons and Recipes from One Year of Trying to Bake My Way to a Boyfriend for Free Online

and changing their minds.
    For the cake:
    ½ cup (100 g) sugar
    3 large eggs
    1 cup (125 g) all-purpose flour
    ½ cup (50 g) finely ground pretzels
    1 teaspoon baking powder
    ¼ cup (60 ml) plain yogurt
    1 tablespoon finely ground pistachios
    For the filling:
    ¾ cup (180 ml) heavy whipping cream
    3 tablespoons finely ground pistachios
    ⅛ teaspoon salt
    1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
    To make the cake : Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a 9-by-12-inch (23-by-30-cm) baking sheet with waxed paper or parchment paper.
    Beat the sugar and eggs together until foamy.
    In a separate bowl, combine the flour, pretzels, and baking powder.
    Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture, then add the yogurt, then the pistachios. Spread the batter into the prepared sheet.
    Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the consistency is firm and cakelike.
    Have a clean, damp kitchen towel ready for when you take the cake out of the oven. Slide the cake, still on the paper, onto the towel. Starting from a short side, roll the cake up, still on the paper, and wrap it in the towel, forming a roll. Let cool for 30 minutes.
    To make the filling : In a chilled bowl, using a chilled whisk or electric mixer with the whisk attachment, whip the cream, pistachios, and salt until stiff peaks form. Unroll and unwrap the cake, being careful not to tear it. Spread the filling over the flattened cake, then roll it back up and transfer to a serving platter, seam-side down. Dust with the confectioners’ sugar.



A
    HAVEN’T WE MET?
    Commonly Encountered Boy Personalities
    (1) The Artist Wearing an Old Man Sweater
    (2) The Guy Trying to Pull Off a Shark-tooth Necklace
    (3) The Proselytizing Nonprofit Worker
    (4) The Affable Musician Who Works Part-time at Starbucks
    (5) The Guy Who Invests in Business Models You Don’t Understand
    (6) The Guy Who Just Wants to Go Home
    (7) The Skeptical Skinny Freelancer
    (8) The Eccentric Guy Who Works at the Farmers’ Market
    (9) The Guy Who Dives Right in to Sober Karaoke
    (10) The Schmoozy Hollywood Guy with Veneers





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    Cakes for Crushing Losses, Sour Realizations, and Frustrated Efforts
    There’s no other way to say it: these are cakes for eating your feelings. They’ve been paired with my accounts of promising interactions gone wildly astray. This is your go-to chapter for moping, mourning, and commiserating with cake during times of disillusionment, but you’re going to have to rejoin society once the tartness wears off. Sometimes you just have to get back in the kitchen and crank out another cake to take to a bar.

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    The Guy Who Said You’ll Never Meet Anyone in This Town

    This gentleman was English, which made him seem especially authoritative when he started dispensing unprompted dating advice over cake.
    “Los Angeles is a terrible place to meet people,” he said.
    “Why do you say that?” I asked.
    “Because the number one emotion in this town is desperation,” he said. “Look around.”
    We took in the crowd: lots of hot people hoping to get noticed by other hot people who could maybe get them a better job. I had managed to forget that this was the same population that made up my dating pool, and remembering this was not only troubling, but I, too, now seemed just as desperate as these schmoozers in my so-called desperation to bait a boyfriend. My very cake reeked of despondency.
    It was only later when comfort-eating cake in the laptop glow of Netflix that I considered I could still meet someone normal. Young people who flocked to big cities had great ambitions and some notion of a work ethic, and I probably wanted to date someone who had plans for their life past living in their parents’ basement. I wasn’t desperate to find a boyfriend—I was just being proactive about it.



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    Skinny Espresso Cake, No Whip
    For actors and model friends who can smell a piece and feel almost as if they ate some.
    For the cake:
    ¾ cup (1½ sticks/170 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
    1 cup