DENVER — Friday, March 19, marks one year since Next with Kyle Clark started airing from Kyle's basement.
We've had plenty of fun with the new set, turning it into a Zoom background and Christmas tree ornament. We never expected that it might come to mean something to the people who join us for this program each night.
We've sat down together since March 2020, in all of our living rooms, to discuss serious topics and find reasons to laugh. We've talked about community and recovery, and about resilience and hope.
And somewhere along the way, you didn't just appreciate these conversations, but people shared that they liked the space and the feel of home.
Jean Plotkin is one of those people.
She wrote to us this week knowing the basement-versary was coming. Jean shared a kind note about finding reassurance and comfort when she saw the woodpile.
Her sentiment means so much to us on the Next team, and we appreciate all of the similar messages we've gotten in the last year.
With that said, we also wanted to share something else that Jean shared with us: a cake.
Jean made this delicious-looking tribute to the basement woodpile Next viewers have come to obsess over, and she shared the recipe with us so you can make your own at home.
She said the cake and icing recipes came from her mom. You can see her cake recipe here and icing recipe here.
This is her summary of what she did:
"Both were passed down from my Mom. I used the white cake recipe to make two 8" squares. I cut out a circle from one layer and stacked it on top of the other layer, then covered the entire thing with icing. I used a bunch of different piping tips and tools to add on the bricks and mortar (#48 and #3 tips, if you want to get technical). The process was far from perfect, and it's riddled with mistakes, but all in all I think it turned out pretty cool looking! For the logs, I used chocolate and cookies n' cream Pocky sticks, pretzel rods, and Pirouette wafer cookies, all broken into thirds. I brushed the sides with melted white chocolate (so they would look like the aspen bark), and dabbed some dyed icing on top so it'd look like the cut ends of the wood. The logo I just free-hand piped onto the cake board. I messed up a bunch, but it was easy enough to just wipe it clean and start over!"
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