I baked a cake just for you!

Well, at least the photos are for you.

But I baked it so I could take the photos for you. So, see? I really did bake the cake for you!

I first made this cake last week, the same week I also made a banana cake (for the second time) and a prune cake (too oily, but it has potential). Forty-eight hours later there was not a cakey crumb in sight. Feast or famine—that’s my modus operandi.

Understand, we didn’t eat the cakes all by ourselves. One day there were seven kids running free in the back forty, and they succeeded in doing a fair bit of damage to the prune cake. And then the chocolate cake got divvied out between three households. Sometimes it pays to be my friend.

I’ll be honest with you: at first I thought I didn’t like the chocolate cake. Then I tasted it and changed my mind. Then my not-enthusiastic-about-cake friend gushed that it was THE BEST CHOCOLATE CAKE SHE’D EVER EATEN, so I recanted, completely and totally. And then I made a second cake. So I could take pictures and post about it. For YOU.

For once, I’m glad we’re separated by cybersparky pixel mega-doohickeys because I’m not planning on doling out this cake with such a generous hand, and having you show up on my doorstep waving forks in my face is a lot more intimidating than your typewritten words. I’d like this three-layer cake to last longer this time around, perhaps for a whole three or four days. If that’s possible.

The reason I wasn’t sure I liked this cake was because it crumbles. Only dry cakes crumble, right? WRONG! While kids will certainly wreck havoc with this confection (no matter what type of flooring you have, after serving this to children, your tile/hardwood/linoleum floor will look like it is black-speckled), well-mannered adults won’t have any problem. So to recap: the cake is not dry. It is moist and tasty and lush and ambrosial, yadda-yadda-yadda.

As for the icing?

Suffice it to say, this is The Mother Chocolate Frosting of all chocolate frostings. Rich as all get out (will someone please tell me where this expression comes from?), but only minimally sweet, it’s heaven on a cake.

It’s easy, too. And you can make it with light or dark chocolate, altering it to suit your whimsy tastes.

Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake
Adapted from the April 2010 issue of Bon Appetit

You can use any bittersweet chocolate in place of the chocolate chips, but do not exceed 61% cacao, or so say the fancy-schmancy chefs at Bon Appetit.

Be sure to use real, full-fat mayo. It’s the only fat in the cake.

The original recipe called for dark brown sugar, but I’ve made it with both light and dark now, and I can’t detect the difference.

The absence of salt is not a typo; there really is no salt in the cake.

One idea I’m considering for future bakings: to replace the boiling water with boiling strong coffee. Yes?

2 ounces chocolate chips
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 3/4 cups boiling water
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/3 cups mayonnaise (full-fat)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Place the chocolate chips and unsweetened cocoa in a medium-sized glass mixing bowl. Add the boiling water and stir till the chocolate has melted. Set aside.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the sugars and mayonnaise. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla and beat well.

Add the dry ingredients alternately with the melted chocolate, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

Divide the batter between three eight-inch (and 1 ½ inch high) cake pans that have been buttered and lined with wax paper. Bake the cakes at 350 degrees till an inserted toothpick comes out clean, about 30 minutes. (Do not over bake.)

Cool the cakes for ten minutes before cutting around the edges with a table knife and turning out the cakes onto a cooling rack. When they have cooled completely, frost them, or wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze till later.

Classic Chocolate Frosting
Adapted from the April 2010 issue of Bon Appetit

10 ounces chocolate chips
1 ½ cups (3 sticks) butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon vanilla

Melt the chocolate chips in the top part of a double boiler. Set aside to cool slightly.

Cream the butter. Add the sugar and beat some more. Beat in the vanilla. Add the melted chocolate and beat to combine.

Slather generously over your favorite cake, eat, and groan orgasmically.

Or I would say “groan orgasmically,” but this is a family blog so I won’t.

Huh?

About one year ago: A Service Announcement For Parents, or All Kids Really Want Is Some Dirt.

I never told you what I did for Lent this year. I told you what I didn’t do—I didn’t give up sugar or chocolate or coffee (or any of my happy addictions), nor did I commit to getting rid of forty bags of stuff in forty days or any of the other laudable commitments because … I didn’t want to. (Which isn’t exactly the point of Lent, I know, but there you have it, the cold hard truth.) Furthermore, Lent fell in the middle of our annual spending freeze, and though it certainly wasn’t Lent-inspired, I felt like I was already pushing myself in the Giving Things Up Arena. So for Lent we decided to take on something new—company.

Hosting is a hurdle for me. Let’s be clear about this right from the get-go: this is not the fault of the company. This hosting hurdle thingy is something I’ve erected for my own self to trip over. (I’m kind to myself that way, creating obstacle courses for the heck of watching myself crash and burn.) These hurdles we’re talking about now, the hosting kind, consist of semi-ridiculous, self-imposed expectations such as a sparkling clean house, washed hair, and well-balanced, plentiful, and creative meals. Just the thought of jumping through all those hoops is enough to make me quit the race entirely and go strike off on a hike through the woods, figuratively speaking, which is what I do, most times, hosting be damned.

So, Lent came around and I decided it was time for me to grab the bull by the horns. I was going to host me some company and I was going to kick those hurdles right out of the race! Removing self-imposed hurdles is no easy task, but by gum, it was lent and I was going to do it! So as a family we brainstormed together about who we’d like to have over for dinner and then I made the contacts and set up the dates.

My goal was one hosting event per week and my plan To Be Relaxed was three-pronged. First, I’d only cook down-home simple food. (One family got beans, rice, and scrambled eggs while another got pizza and carrot and celery sticks.) Second, I’d try not to clean the house, at least not too much. We’d pick up and vacuum, and I’d spend about half an hour with a wet rag, but that was it. Third, I wouldn’t get showered or dressed (up). I’d allowed myself a quick twirl of the hairbrush and a clean shirt. (Once I even talked myself into staying in my yoga pants. I was so proud of myself, I think I even pointed them out to the guests.)

And you know what? With my imposed relaxation techniques, hosting wasn’t all that bad! My pre-company tizz was zapped, and I was able to enjoy the guests, which was the whole point of hosting in the first place. We spent hours visiting at the table, in chairs by the fire, and in one case, wrapped up in blankets on the candle-lit porch in one of the first sit-outside-and-enjoy-the-sunset evenings of the year. We didn’t have company over every week like I had intended, but as well as the new guests, we hosted family (they don’t count as company) and I had regular visits from girlfriends. We were also the final stop for a youth group progressive supper, but that was just chocolate cupcakes and glasses of cold milk out at the picnic table.

From my little experiment I confirmed two hunches. First, I am the one preventing us from hosting. Second, I like hosting.

It’s true that it is easier to skip the company and just be by our lonesomes, doing chores, reading books, working on personal projects. I’m more tired after an evening of company, the kids get to bed later, there’s a bigger pile of dishes, and personal projects need to be caught up on later.

But! There’s something invigorating about spending an evening with people you don’t normally hang with. Conversation is elevated, adrenaline flows, and relationships deepen.

So what keeps me from hosting more often? It takes effort to arrange such meetings. When you live out in the country, guests don’t just magically appear on your doorstep. I’m learning it works best for me to do planning in bulk. When I take a few minutes to make a list of potential guests and then line up a bunch of dinner dates, a lot more hosting gets done. Otherwise, it’s easier to just let everyday life run the show, and while everyday life might be challenging, it’s not often very “elevated.”

Yesterday was our church’s annual Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner event. We signed up to be hosts and were informed late last week that come Sunday noon, four adults and three children would show up at our door. We were to provide the main course (family number two the salad and bread, and family number three the dessert), so I decided on baked spaghetti (and a kettle of peas to round out the meal). I assembled the casserole on Saturday and then whizzed home after church on Sunday to pop it in the oven (and wash the breakfast dishes) before the guests showed up. The guests came, yummy food in hand, and we ate and visited till late afternoon.

Now Lent is over and my calendar is blank with no dinner guests on the foreseeable horizon. I think it’s time I go make a new list. Should I pencil you in?

Baked Spaghetti

This is supposed to be a way to use up leftover spaghetti, but seeing as we almost never have any leftovers (of consequence) when I make spaghetti, I make this meal straight up, purchasing fresh ingredients for the sole purpose of creating this dish. It’s a good one to take to potlucks and homebound folks, or to make ahead for yourselves or some Sunday dinner guests.

Feel free to omit the meat, change around the proportions (less egg or butter, or more), add more veggies, use different cheeses, etc. Make it to suit you and yours.

1 pound spaghetti
6 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (the dry, pre-grated kind, or fine-grated yourself)
4 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 pound ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped (optional)
4 cups spaghetti sauce (I used a quart of this)
2-3 cups cottage cheese
2-3 cups mozzarella cheese, grated

Brown the beef with the onion and pepper. Set aside.

Cook the spaghetti according to package instructions and drain. Cool the spaghetti to room temperature, roughly cut it up with a kitchen shears, and set aside to cool to room temperature.

Stir together the melted butter, Parmesan cheese, eggs, salt, and pepper, and add the mixture to the cooled spaghetti, tossing to coat.

Put the spaghetti in a 9×13 pan. (This amount makes a very full pan, so either keep a little spaghetti out, or else use an even bigger pan.) Top with the cottage cheese, followed by the ground beef and then the spaghetti sauce. (At this point you can refrigerate or freeze the casserole, tightly covered.)

Bake the casserole at 375 degrees till hot and bubbly, about thirty minutes. Remove from the oven, top with the grated mozzarella cheese, and return to the oven for another ten minutes till the cheese is toasty-melted. Let the casserole stand at room temperature for about ten minutes before serving.

About one year ago: A poem for poetry month.

I haven’t been satisfied with my banana cake recipe. It’s a good cake, mind you, but a bit too thin and—dare I say it?—rubbery.

There. Now I’ve gone and made it sound perfectly despicable, and it’s not. Back in the day when she had curly-wild hair and wore sundresses, my mother made it in the shape of a barn for my brother’s birthday. There was even a silo (cake baked in a tin) and the platter—er, barnyard—was inhabited with plastic animals. It was a great cake.

I taught the women in my Nicaraguan women’s group how to bake that banana cake (minus the silos and plastic animals). They loved the recipe and the cake immediately became their favorite (that and torta simple, a plain white cake similar to basic shortcake).

Banana trees studded their dirt yards and yet they had never made banana cake! Can you imagine? Probably not, and there’s probably a lot of other things that they’ve never done or seen or tasted that you can’t imagine. Think, for instance, vegetable peelers, washing machines, coffee pots, bacon, mozzarella, diaper covers (yes, you read that right), telephones, etc. And they had never baked using flour. Instead, they used ground-up corn to make the regional favorite—rosquía, a dry, crumbly cookie tasting of soured milk and corn. I learned to love them, for real, but many gringos never develop an appreciation for them (and that’s a polite way of putting it).

In any case, the women wanted to learn how to bake with flour and I wanted to teach them. There were no ovens, except for the outdoor kind, so when we gathered to bake, we baked in quantity—thirty or more sheet cakes at a time. It was a huge undertaking, filled with many variables (think no measuring cups or regulated ovens, let alone any thermometers). I had to learn to relax my standards.

Along with the banana cake and torta simple, I taught the women to make carrot cake, almond cookies, braided bread, donuts, frostings and more. The last year I was there, I pulled all the recipes together into a little booklet and gave them each a copy. I doubt they ever make the butter frostings and the yeast breads (the ingredients are scarce and cost prohibitive), but I like to think they still make the banana cake.

That banana cake was a fine recipe even though I no longer make it.

I now make this one—a recipe that calls for yogurt, whole wheat flour, and brown sugar. Simple changes, they are, but the resulting cake is lighter and more flavorful. The yogurt gives it a pleasant tang (sour cream may be substituted but the zip will go missing) and the brown sugar adds a caramely depth that was absent in the white sugar version.

The thing I like best about this recipe? That it’s healthy enough to stand in for a breakfast muffin, but when topped with a luscious peanut butter frosting, it transforms into a decadent cake.

In other words, this recipe meets all my banana cake needs and will be, until one of my daughters (or sons) grows up and teaches me otherwise, my one and only banana cake recipe.

Banana Cake
A family recipe, with inspiration from the April 2010 issue of Bon Appetit

½ cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1½ teaspoons vanilla
½ cup plain yogurt
3 small bananas, mashed (to equal one cup)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat till creamy and smooth. Beat in the yogurt and mashed bananas. Add the dry ingredients and stir to combine.

Grease pans (makes 12 muffins and one small cake) and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for ten minutes, cut around the edges and invert cakes/muffins onto a cooling rack. When they are completely cool, frost them with the icing of your choice (I recommend the following peanut butter frosting), or freeze them for later.

Creamy Peanut Butter Frosting
From the April 2010 issue of Bon Appetit

This differs from the other peanut butter frosting in that it is less sweet. Also, the measurements are more straightforward.

½ cup butter
8 ounces cream cheese
½ cup smooth peanut butter (not freshly ground or old-fashioned)
1 ½ cups confectioners sugar, sifted

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until they are perfectly creamy (lumps now will be lumps later). Add the peanut butter and beat some more. Beat in the sugar.

About one year ago: In their genes.