• chocolate birthday cake

    When I left for the soiree, I made a list for my husband. Things like drop-off and pick-up times for kids, food suggestions, a few jobs that must take priority, etc. At the end of the list I wrote, “Clean the house,” and “Baby me,” because I’d be arriving home on my birthday and did not want to come into a mess or have any responsibilities or anything to get under my pms-y skin. (We’re both getting pretty good about tiptoeing around the pms monster. When provoked, it will eat both of us alive. And neither of us likes being eaten alive all that much.)


    When I walked in the door at 7 pm, the house was spotless and all five of my most beloveds were sitting on the sofa watching a movie, and an iced cake was sitting all pretty on the table. While they finished up the last ten minutes, I unpacked and put away my stuff, got a shower, changed into my new cherry pie pjs with ruffled edges (thank you, auntie!), and came back downstairs for cake, cards, and presents.


    Each of the kids had made me little book-cards (should I call them “cooks?” or “bards?”) bedecked with cut-outs, drawings, nonsensical poems, coins, paper doors that latched and opened up to reveal birthday messages, hearts, etc. Gifts included measuring cups, a bouquet of wooden spoons (my husband is grossed out by my cracking—and therefore, food-collecting, ew!—wooden spoons), a lemon press, a salad spinner, and a camera lens. There was also a bag of cheap, disgusting, chemical-laden florescent cheese popcorn that my baby bought me with his own money so it was super sweet and special. And my little girl bought me a selection of gummy candy from Martin’s bulk food bins, also with her own money.

    And then we ate the cake.


    Now, I have very low expectations when it comes to my birthday fare. Past birthday menus have included burned pancakes and take-out pizza and I’m fine with that. My only stipulation is that I do not want to cook. On my birthday, someone else gets the honor of feeding all the mouths. So I wasn’t expecting the cake to be anything special. Just, you know, cake.


    But cutting into it, I got worried. It was heavy and dense to the point of brickishness. And it felt dry, too. I smiled behind my face (which is another way of saying “to myself”) at how cute it is when my family tries to step into my shoes and started eating. Almost immediately, I stopped eating and studied the cake. What was it? A few more tentative bites and the mystery was not solved. I slowed down even more and turned my full attention to cake contemplation. Bites without icing and bites with. Middle bites, edge bites. I was very thorough. Then I said, “This is really good cake.”

    My husband, who was giving it the same thorough going over, nodded in agreement. “Yeah, it’s not bitter. But is it dry, do you think? Maybe I over-baked it?”

    “No, I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it’s supposed to be this way. Kind of fudgy and dense, but not wet at all. The texture is really unique. I like it.”

    “The kids will probably be up all night,” he said. (They weren’t.) “It has half a pound of chocolate in it and a three-quarter cup of cocoa.”

    “So that’s why it’s so good!” I crowed, mystery solved.


    Chocolate Birthday Cake
    The recipe comes from a the back of a children’s book, The Bake Shop Ghost, by Jacqueline K. Ogburn. (I know! He got the recipe from a children’s book! How sweet is that?)

    The recipe called for 4 tablespoons buttermilk powder and 1 cup water. My husband didn’t think I had buttermilk powder (but I did!), so he used homemade buttermilk in place of the water. I’m using his adaptations below.

    1 ½ cups sugar
    1 1/4 cups flour
    3/4 cup cocoa
    ½ teaspoon baking soda
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    1 ½ sticks (3/4 cup) butter
    8 ounces semisweet chocolate
    1 cup buttermilk
    4 eggs, beaten
    1 teaspoon vanilla

    Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

    In a saucepan, melt the butter and chocolate on low heat. Remove from heat and beat in the buttermilk and then the eggs and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and stir until blended.

    Divide the batter between two greased, wax paper-lined 8-inch or 9-inch baking pans. Bake at 325 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes. An inserted toothpick should come out with crumbs still attached, not completely dry. (My husband reports that there were no crumbs clinging to his toothpick, so perhaps it was over baked? Maybe it’s supposed to be more of a brownie cake? Perhaps the mystery is not just yet solved? There may be another chocolate cake in my future?)

    Let the cakes rest for 10 minutes before running a knife around the edges of the pans and inverting onto a cooling rack. Frost and serve.

    Vanilla Water Frosting
    Instead of milk, this recipe uses water to thin down the icing. As a result, the icing has a lighter, cleaner taste, kind of like a glaze. Though it is definitely still an icing. Follow?

    3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
    1/3 cup butter, room temperature
    1/4 cup water
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    pinch of salt

    Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat until smooth. Yields enough, but just barely, to ice a two-layer cake.

    This same time, years previous: ciabatta, dumping, peposo, butterscotch cookies

  • the skirt

    My daughter has been taking sewing lessons from a friend for about a year. Sunday was her last lesson. They finished up the skirt she’s been working on for several sessions.


    When she walked into the living room to model it for me after I got home from the soiree, I stopped dead in my tracks and gasped. I had no idea.


    No idea it would turn out so pretty. No idea that the crazy fabric we picked out at the shop (“But I want dog fabric, Mama!”) would come together so nicely. No idea it would be so full and twirly. No idea that she’d actually want to wear it.


    My daughter is not a skirt girl, but this red little number has seemed to change her mind. She’s puffed up with pride and glowing like a thousand watt bulb. I have to keep telling her to change out of it so it’ll stay nice.


    Last night when I went upstairs for chatty time, she was industriously ripping out threads. “What are you doing?” I yelped, panicked.

    “I’m taking out the gathering threads,” she explained.

    “What do you mean? Did your teacher tell you to? Are you supposed to do that?”

    “Yes, it’s fine,” she said, waving a seam in front of my worried eyes.

    “Well, don’t damage it,” I warned.

    “I’m not,” she said, without lifting her eyes from the skirt in her lap.

    She didn’t crack a smile, but I could tell she was pleased as punch that our roles had reversed and she knew more than me.


    This same time, years previous:
    birthday minutia

  • She outdid herself

    This past weekend was The Soiree of 2011* and it was spectacular, spectaculoso, spectaculovelicious, etc. My aunt fairly outdid herself.


    Each soiree has the same general outline: a noon lunch extraordinaire on the veranda, an activity, dinner out, and Sunday morning brunch. The specifics of these events are top secret. My aunt likes to build excitement by sending us photos of all the boxes arriving on her doorstep. Bonus activities: some sort of verbal game, a divvying up of my aunt’s hand-me-downs (this can be uproarious funny—like this time when another aunt waltzed around the room with her jeans down around her ankles), our gifts to her and hers to us. (Yes, she gives us a gift. I wasn’t joking about the outdoing herself part.)


    This year, the noon-time meal lasted nearly four hours. There was vichysoisse, a shaved summer squash salad, and the star of the show, paella.


    While my aunt stirred and simmered and seasoned, we stood around the pan and kept up a worshipful commentary.


    Only one person, my mother, assumed the correct position.


    She’d probably like me to tell you she was checking the flame, not worshiping, but I’ll let you be the judge.


    Do you know how hard it is to cook while surrounded by a bunch of opinionated Mennonite cooks? Considering the high-levels of stress under which she was operating, I’m surprised my aunt didn’t whack anyone with a clammy lobster.


    But indeed she didn’t and all the lobsters made it into the paella and then onto our plates and into our tummies, yummy, yummy.

    After we drained our mugs of coffee and scraped the last bit of brown sugar frosting from our plates, we piled into cars and shuttled across town to the not-yet-disclosed entertainment…


    …which turned out to be an art studio where we dabbled in oil paints and created a red flower each. (Hospital scrubs courtesy of my doctor aunt.)


    The instructor had the habit of walking up behind you and painting on our paintings, which irked my aunt, mother, and I to high heaven. Clearly, the teacher was an instructor and not an artist because what artist will paint on another person’s paintings? That’s right—they don’t. So when the instructor bore down on my aunt’s painting, she screeched, “Don’t touch it!” And when she encroached on my space, I struck a discreet but effective defensive pose and timidly squeaked, “I’ll do it myself?” And thus I kept my painting instructor-stroke free.


    The art session made me kick myself for not taking art all four years of high school. I never got to oil paintings, and oil paintings are a heck of a lot of fun. This I now know.

    By the time we walked into the restaurant at 8 o’clock, I was, amazingly enough, beginning to get hungry again. Our dishes came family-style, so we got to sample everything which made us all glow with happiness and contentment. Beef, shrimp, oysters, chicken, salads, and vegetables, oh my. And then panna cotta, cheesecake, tiramisu and red velvet cake, oh my my. Completely sated, I slumped back in my seat and wished I might magically be floated home on a cloud.

    It was at dinner that my aunt told us she had called all our husbands and asked them six questions. They had to email her the answers and the following morning we would try to correctly guess their answers. Whoever got the most answers right would be declared the winner.

    These were the questions:

    1. What is your wife’s most annoying habit?
    2. If your wife had to choose between three cities to live in—Atlanta, Dallas, and San Francisco—which would she choose and why?
    3. What is your favorite way to have a potato prepared?
    4. Which of your wife’s girlfriends do you find the most attractive?
    5. What color does your wife wear the most?
    6. Where was your first kiss? Be specific.

    the winner (but I came in second)

    There was much howling and hooting as each new question was revealed. But we weren’t allowed to say the answers until the Sunday brunch.


    Sunday morning we all gathered in the sunroom for coffee and chit-chat (it’s becoming a tradition) and then a walk to the bakery for breakfast breads. Brunch was yet another feast of eggs, bacon, paella, fruit, coffee, juice, and more breads and biscotti than was decent (but I’m not complaining, no, no, no).


    We took turns answering the quiz questions while my aunt checked our answers against what our husbands wrote. I got all of them right (except number 3—potatoes fried in bacon fat, huh?—and number 6 because he got it wrong) (oh, and except number 1, though I got it right on the second try, which was my first guess but I second-guessed myself, duh), but it made me inordinately happy that we got number 2 right. I said, “San Francisco because La Brea Bakery is there,” (which was wrong because La Brea Bakery is in Los Angeles but how am I supposed to keep that straight when I’ve never been there?), and then my aunt read his answer, “San Francisco, because there are cafés and bakeries,” and I was all like, “Aw shoot, my honey knows me!”


    Before we left drove away, there was an assortment of Jeni’s macaroon ice cream sandwiches in honor of my birthday.


    Exotic flavors included Earl Grey, scarlet (I never knew scarlet was a flavor) and orchid vanilla, pistachio, and my favorite, salted caramel.


    Oh, and there was a rousing chocolate taste testing. We tasted with such enormous dedication and thoroughness that you would’ve thunk our lives depended on it. Though I forget which one came in first…


    Did I mention there were babies in attendance? A girl and a boy, twelve and thirteen weeks respectively. My aunt couldn’t have lined up better in-house entertainment if she had tried.


    This handsome butterball was a cuddle bum—he’d melt into the arms of whoever was holding him.


    And this one has the habit of sucking her right thumb while holding the top of her head with her left hand. I can hardly stand the sweetness!


    There is something special, nay precious, about getting together with the women (and nursing babes) in my family and talking our fool heads off for twenty-four hours straight. What a luxury. What a gift. Thank you, auntie hostess dear.

    *Previous soirees: soiree of 2009, soiree of 2010

    This same time, years previous: painting my belly, roasted butternut squash salad, a jiggle on the wild side, stream of consciousness, my beginnings