Going Retro With the Ring Ding

In which I find inspiration from Dorie Greenspan's chocolate thyme cake . . . and the original Hostess Ring Ding.

Before starting this story, I ate two spoons of frozen chocolate frosting, one of those Babybel cheese balls and a slurp of yesterday's coffee, washed down with lemonade. That's sugar, cheese, caffeine and sugar. There might have been a leftover sourdough pancake in there, too. Finally, a little smoky Lapsang Souchong tea got me going.

I'm in a phase where I just think Dorie Greenspan has everything right. She's written 10 cookbooks and won six James Beard and IACP awards for them, including Cookbook of the Year. She has a New York Times Bestseller in her book "Around My French Table." She's co-authored books with Pierre Hermé, the king of Parisian pastry, and scribed one of my favorite cookbooks, "Baking With Julia," for Julia Child. Mon incredible dieu.

Naturally I take my cues from the top shelf - if you must steal for inspiration, steal from the best. From her book "Paris Sweets," I found a recipe for a cake with chocolate and thyme. That intrigued me, because unusual flavor combinations just fascinate the tongue, don't you think? I never need an excuse to fling flower in the kitchen, I just storm in there and blaze a trail in the quest to discover what works in wondrous ways that never cease. If she's the pie piper, I'm following along.

My Greenspan phase is directly tied to the fact that as a result of her years of experience in New York, Connecticut, Paris and beyond (including her Beurre & Sel emporium in Manhattan and online), she's highly adept at giving us recipes that work, taste fabulous and never talk in language as if they were intended for a room full of doctoral candidates in molecular science.

If she says chocolate and thyme go together, then they do and I want to know what it's like. I didn't make the leap to try, though, until I  flipped through a copy of "The Art and Soul of Baking" and its recipe for Retro Ringers - a twist on the classic Hostess Ring Ding (or Ding Dong, read here to straighten out the confusion).

This book's yeah, yeah recipe for the cake's cream filling and devil's food cake looked so-so, but then it hit me: Use the Greenspan chocolate thyme cake to make the Ring Ding shape. I already had in my possession a chocolate frosting (see mention of taste-testing above), but I used the chocolate cake, thyme syrup and thyme cream from Greenspan's book to make a new version of the Retro Ringer.

Make the cake in an 8-inch square pan, then use round cookie cutters to make the shapes and go from there. Choose your own berries and edible flowers. Find Dorie on Facebook and tell her about it. Don't be shy.

To dare is human.