Chocolate Shadow Cake

Vanilla coke not included in recipe. I just wanted to remember how excited i was when I found it at a corner store near our flat.

My other grandmother (not Eleanor) told me once how, when she was a newlywed, she would make a cake for my grandfather every week, and they'd eat the whole thing by themselves in seven days, when she would make another one. “It's a wonder we didn't gain a hundred pounds that first year!” she said, shaking her head. Judson doesn't like cake, and they're kind of a pain to make, so I haven't been making one a week, but I have been making a lot lately. The thing is, cake freezes beautifully.

A professional baker I met once told me her secret was that she always froze her cakes for at least a day in between baking them and frosting them, because the ice crystals that formed in the cake would melt when it was thawed and made the cakes even moister. I don't know if that's true, but I do know I've had at least half of a frozen cake in my fridge for the better part of two months now, and I don't mind one bit. You really just never know when you'll be having a bad day and need a slice of chocolate cake to improve it, or a really good day and need a slice of cake to celebrate it.

(Also, Judson and I both tend to forget that we even have a freezer, so once a cake goes in there, it's temporarily forgotten until I reach in for ice, and then I spot the cake again and it's a cheery surprise, as close to having Santa's elves living in my kitchen and making cake when I'm not around as I'll probably ever get.)

All of that brings me to this cake, which is much more lovely than the slightly-sinister name would suggest. I made it last week in a fit of stress baking, on a day when I had already made a pot of blood orange curd, but I still wanted to be in the kitchen, where things are predictable, warm, and static. The recipe comes from the same Woman's Day Kitchen Collector's Cook Book #28: Chocolate Cakes and Frostings mini-book that the last chocolate cake I made came from, and it's dated May 1959. Since the recipe just calls for “fluffy white frosting,” I was on my own until I found a recipe in the box labelled, I kid you not, “Fluffy White Frosting.” Coincidences like this are how I know this project was clearly meant to be.

The cake itself is wonderful-- soft but still firm enough to bear the icing I slathered it with, and it had that amazing crisp-chewy ring around the edge that makes eating a piece of cake a totally transcendent experience. The frosting was also wonderfully, warmly vanilla (I love when “white” frosting becomes “vanilla” and has a depth of flavour beyond just SUGAR), but either I didn't make enough (a real possibility since I used a separate recipe for the cake and the frosting) or I didn't mix it long enough to get it as fluffy as its title boasts (also possible, as I detest making buttercream because it always covers my entire kitchen in a fine layer of powdered sugar), because I barely had enough frosting to cover between the layers and the top of the cake, much less to ice the sides. I increased the frosting recipe below by 50% to account for frosting the sides, too but if you are not a frosting fiend, feel free to reduce.

All that said, we're happily eating it, frozen or not, and I still recommend it... just not for the icing lover in your life.

The verdict:

4 spoons. It was lovely, but I miss frosted sides.

This is the giant mess i sometimes make when I cook. my mom, the neatest cook in the world, would be mortified.

The recipe:

Chocolate Shadow Cake with Fluffy White Frosting

The Ingredients:

The Cake:

4 oz unsweetened chocolate, plus 2 more optional oz for decoration
½ c hot water
1 ¾ c sugar
½ c softened butter, plus 2 more optional tsp for decoration
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
2 c sifted cake flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
2/3 c milk

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE DIRECTIONS:

CAKE:

Melt 4 oz. chocolate in the hot water over very low heat until thickened, stirring constantly (if you have a double boiler, use it here!).
Add ½ c sugar and cook 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and let cool.
While mixture is cooling, preheat oven to 176C/350F, and line the bottoms of two 9 inch round cake pans with parchment paper.
Cream butter and remaining 1 ¼ c sugar.
Add vanilla, then eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.
Add flour mixture alternately with milk, beating until smooth.
Add cooled chocolate mixture and blend until mixture is of uniform consistency.
Pour into prepared cake pans (if you only have one, like I do, divide mixture in half and store unused half in a cool place until your pan is freed up).
Bake 40-45 minutes, until a pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Allow to cool completely, then frost with fluffy white frosting.
After frosting is set, melt the remaining 2 oz of chocolate (if using) with 2 tsp butter.
Dribble over cake and let set before serving.

THE FROSTING:

½ c soft butter
4 ½ c confectioner's sugar
4-6 tbsp milk
1 ½ tsp vanilla

FROSTING:

Beat all ingredients until smooth, scraping down sides of mixing bowl regularly.
Add more powdered sugar if too thin, and more milk or vanilla if too thick.
Continue beating for 30-60 seconds after frosting is blended to increase fluffiness.

Chicken in Chicken Sauce

I don't know how Eleanor felt about April Fool's Day, though I know my grandpa Wilbur, the inventor of Dad Jokes, probably loved it. I don't have any joke recipes to share with you today, but I do have this: a recipe I was a fool to think would taste good.

Do you know that joke on Arrested Development where Lindsay is making dinner because the caterers quit, and she tells everyone they're having “chicken in chicken sauce?” That's basically this meal, only slightly less salmonella-ish than hers (which involved cooking the chicken in the water it thawed in).

It's nothing fancy-- just chicken breasts cooked in chicken soup-- but it's bland and boring and I guess if you were sick and just needed the vitamins that chicken soup gives you then maybe it would be good? It wasn't bad: Judson and I ate some of it for dinner last night and I'm going to shred up the rest and try to make it into something more excited tonight-- it just had no flavour beyond basic “chickeniness,” which isn't really positive at all, I think.

The Verdict:

1 spoon out out five. Do not recommend. Thanks a lot, Campbell's.

The recipe:

Quick Bland Chicken in Chicken Sauce

The Ingredients:

1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 boneless chicken breasts
1 10 oz-can Cream of Chicken soup (thinned with ½ c milk if necessary)

THE DIRECTIONS:

Heat oil in a skillet and add chicken breasts.
Cook until browned.
Add soup (and milk, if needed) and heat to a boil.
Cover and cook over low heat 5-10 minutes until done.

Yields 4 tastelessly bland chicken breasts, perfect for... well... I'm not really sure what.

Easter Bread, or, Sweet Breakfast Bread with Raisins

My mom doesn't tell many stories about her childhood, which is weird, because all of the things I know about it are awesome: her pets included a snapping turtle (which she fed by spearing raw beef on the end of a pencil), a mouse, and a de-scented skunk, and for awhile her family kept chickens in their suburban Florida backyard (whose eggs my mom refused to eat because, and I'm quoting her here, “they came from a chicken butt”).

Eleanor and her son, my Uncle Jimmy, on Easter sunday 1960. I like to think my mom is not pictured because she was still rejoicing over her found pet mouse.

Anyway, one of the few stories I know from her childhood is the story of how her pet mouse escaped one Easter morning, and my mom refused to get ready for church until they found it. Irritated, no doubt, by the prospect of being late to Easter services, Eleanor (a devout Catholic) banished my mom to her room and probably threatened her with grievous bodily harm if my mom didn't hurry up and get ready. In tears, my mom threw herself onto the bed, sobbing and probably plotting how she would run away, when her mouse crawled out from under her Easter dress where it had been hiding.

I took this story for granted as a kid: I had always wanted a mouse for a pet and was so jealous that my mom had been allowed to have one. Now that I am (purportedly) a grownup and all three of the apartments Judson and I have lived in since we got married have had unpurchased mouse “pets” living in them upon our arrival, I am mostly just shocked at the idea that anyone would want a pet mouse, particularly my mom, who wasn't even really that fond of dogs until we got one when I was a kid.

I like to imagine that, while my mom was throwing a tantrum and then rejoicing over her lost and found mouse, this Easter bread was rising in the kitchen, ready to be eaten with brunch after church as soon as the Easter egg hunts were finished.

I'm not really sure what makes this “Easter” bread; Judson thinks it's because it contains eggs, while I think it's supposed to be either a Jesus allusion (the bread rose like Christ!) or else a riff on the fact that it's basically just challah, a typical Jewish egg bread. Either way, it's delicious. The recipe, which I thought would be temperamental, is surprisingly forgiving and I've mapped it out below in a much easier to follow manner than how it was bequeathed to me.

It's time consuming-- the bread rises twice, along with a weird hour-or-two long stage where it just sits in a warm place without being mixed, so it's definitely a recipe you want to make the night before you have it for brunch. It's versatile: you could leave out the raisins or swap them for currants or dried cherries, add a dash of cinnamon and cardamom or even an egg wash to shine up the crust right before you pop it in the oven. And the loaf it makes is so large, you'll definitely have enough leftovers to make french toast or bread pudding later in the week-- a prospect I'm already excited about. It's sweet enough you don't need to top it with anything but soft butter, and this morning I sprinkled a little flaky sea salt on top after I toasted a slice with butter and, well, if it's not the best breakfast I've had all week then I don't know. Judson has already mentioned slathering it in clotted cream, which also sounds amazing to me, though it really doesn't need any embellishment to shine.

This is what the "cracks" in the flour should look like at the end of the resting period.

This recipe is written in a hand I don't recognise, but Eleanor added her own notes all the way through-- along with the stains that cover the recipe card, this is how I know she must have made it a fair few times. My favourite note is at the bottom, where she reminds herself that it was “made in applecake pan (grease it).”

The Verdict:

3 spoons out of five. Delicious, but unless you're going to a party, it makes an impractically large loaf. Also, despite the richness of the bread, it's still a bit drier than I would like (hence serving it with butter)-- I wanted this to be a dense, moist bread that bordered on “sweet roll” territory, but instead it's about the same texture as challah: airy and a little bit dry for my taste. Still delicious, and if I get invited to a last minute Easter shindig, this'll be my go-to.

 

The Recipe:

Easter Bread

The Ingredients:

1 c milk
½ c sugar
6 c + 1 tbsp flour, divided
½ tsp salt
4 ½ tsp yeast (2 packets, if you're stateside)
1/3 c water, lukewarm
½ tsp vanilla
4 tbsp butter, melted
3 eggs
1 ¼ c raisins (I used sultanas)

THE DIRECTIONS:

Boil milk and sugar carefully, stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes.
Put 1 tbsp of flour into a large mixing bowl and pour boiled milk mixture over it.
Add salt, mix and smash out all lumps, and allow to cool.
When milk mixture has cooled to lukewarm, dissolve yeast in the warm water, making sure water is not too hot.
Add yeast mixture to lukewarm milk mixture and stir well.
Beat in 1 cup of flour with a whisk.
Sprinkle an additional 1 cup of flour on top of mixture, but don't stir it in. It's helpful at this stage to smooth over your flour gently so it's relatively flat-- you'll notice the cracks better when they finally appear.
Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let stand in a warm place until cracks appear in the flour (see picture). If you're in the UK, this might take up to 2 hours. If you're somewhere warmer, it could be about 30 minutes.
Once cracks have appeared in the flour, mix well with a large spoon.
Add vanilla, melted (but not too hot) butter, eggs, and raisins.
Add 2 cups of flour and mix well.
Continue adding flour gradually, until dough no longer sticks to hand and “is satiny” but not too dry (For me, this meant adding about 2 more cups of flour).
Use spoon to shape dough into a rough ball shape, cover tightly and let rise in a warm place until double, about an hour and a half.
Punch down the dough and knead it well, at least thirty times or so.
Shape according to your pan(s), place dough in pans in a warm place and let rise again, about an hour.*
Preheat oven to 350F/176C and cook for 35 minutes for a single large loaf, or about 25 minutes for two smaller ones.

*I used an ungreased cake pan for this because the dough felt too heavy to go into a loaf pan and I thought it would rise too much. I (and Eleanor, who also made it in a cake pan) definitely recommend this, but if you're intent on making it in loaf pans, make sure you only fill your loaf pans about 2/3 of the way so that the dough has plenty of room to rise. It popped right out of my nonstick cake pan, but if you're worried about sticking or just want an extra brown crust, feel free to grease your pans with a little butter.