It’s Monday and I’ve brought you cake. A chocolate yogurt cake, to be precise.

Actually, this cake is No More. It was No More on Sunday, and it was No More on Saturday. (Yes, I use chocolate cake to mark the passing of time.) The last we saw it in these here parts was on Friday when it made a grand appearance at dessert time, mini-mounds of cream cheese-spiked whipped cream dotting its glossy top. All in all, it was a too-short visit—six eager forks were no match for its tender crumb. I remember The Cake That Is No More with great fondness and a touch of giddy because it was so darn good!

The time between the recipe discovery and the day of reckoning stretched pretty long, especially considering how I could hardly wait to make it. Since it’s a chocolate yogurt cake and we had just finished up the last of the homemade yogurt, I had to get to the store for plain yogurt to use as starter. That took a little while. Then I had to make the yogurt and that took another little while. The days whiled away. While, while, while, la-la-la. I got antsy.

I made the cake on a Thursday, the same evening I made a nectarine cobbler, drank a glass of red, and listened to NPR in the glow of the setting sun. It was Most Pleasant Indeed. But by the time the cake had finished baking (and resting for the prescribed 30 minutes—I set the timer), and I finally got to the cutting and tasting (mouth fireworks!), the sun had dropped out of our sky and I had to crank up the ISO speed on the camera to get a decent picture.

So that’s the story on the cake. Rather uneventful, I suppose. So let’s talk about the actual cake, shall we?

Like I said, it’s a yogurt cake. (I bet you could turn it into a sour cream cake, if so inclined.) It’s meant to be eaten un-iced, kind of like a sweet bread, like lemon or zucchini bread. The cake itself is a no-brainer to mix up—just the basics like flour, cocoa, eggs, and oil, no heavy machinery involved.

The special part comes after the cake has baked, when you pour a hot chocolate syrup over the cake, oh sweet heavens! The velvety dark liquid seeps into the cake, turning it even darker, shinier, and moister. It’s magic.

My non-chocolate lover of a husband scoffed at my feverish excitement, at all my oohing and aahing and prancing about. Oh-so-resignedly, he sat down at the table to eat the piece of cake I’d served him. He took one bite and a sheepish, oh-crap-now-I-have-to-eat-crow look flashed across his face.

“Whaddaya think, whaddaya think, whaddaya think,” I chanted.

“It’s … not bitter,” he said in his standard I’m-saying-something-positive-while-still-managing-to-be-negative manner.

“Yeah? You like it?” I egged him on.

“It’s … moist.” (Bless his heart, the man knows how to eat crow gracefully. He’s had a lot of practice.)

“I know! Isn’t it awesome?”

“Jennifer, it’s a cake. Calm down.”

The recipe hails from the blog Ideas in Food where they cook with centrifuges and dry ice and chemicals that I don’t know how to pronounce. But every now and then they put up a normal recipe, like chocolate cake. The only non-normal thing about this recipe was that it called for chocolate extract. I don’t think I’ve ever seen chocolate extract, let alone used it. (Have you?) So I did what any decent cook would do and added a large glug of coffee liquor. Because, you know, just because.

Chocolate Yogurt Cake

Adapted from Ideas in Food

You could make all sorts of variations, like spike the chocolate syrup, or add some instant coffee granules to the cake batter. However, I think the cake’s beauty comes from its unadorned simplicity, so embellish with caution.

By day two the cake was so moist it was almost wet. Which was not exactly a bad thing… no, no, not at all. But I think this cake is at its glorious peak while still slightly warm.

for the cake:

1 cup flour

½ cup cocoa

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup plain yogurt

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon coffee liquor, optional

½ cup canola oil

for the chocolate syrup:

½ cup sugar

½ cup water

1 tablespoon cocoa

Whisk together the first five ingredients (flour through salt) in a large bowl. Add the yogurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and optional liquor and whisk gently to combine. Add the oil and stir until incorporated.

Pour the batter into a greased, 9-inch springform pan. Thunk the pan firmly on the counter to remove air bubbles. Bake the cake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.

While the cake is baking, combine the ingredients for the chocolate syrup in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Simmer for a couple minutes, stirring occasionally, until the sugar and cocoa are fully dissolved.

Stab the freshly-baked cake with a toothpick—about 30 good pokes—and spoon the hot syrup over the cake. Allow the cake to rest for 30 minutes before serving.

This same time, years previous: roasted tomato sauce, pasta with sauteed peppers and onions

Here’s what jumped into jars over the last 10 days or so:

roasted tomato sauce: 47 pints

tomato juice: 13 quarts

salsa: 27 quarts, 2 pints

plain chopped tomatoes: 26 quarts, 10 pints

tomato and red wine sauce: 8 quarts

Summer Rambo and Ginger Gold applesauce: 80 quarts

sliced nectarines: 13 quarts

chopped nectarines: 39 quarts

sliced peaches: 31 quarts

And into the freezer:

nectarine wedges: 4 quarts

dried nectarines: 10 6-cup quarts

peach slices: 12 quarts

That was the main big push. Before August came along, my shelves were fairly bare. But now? Now they’re all red, yellow, and green.

Here’s the rest of the stuff we’ve put up:

spinach, frozen: 3 quarts, 6 pints

strawberries, frozen: 13 quarts

blueberries (from a vendor), frozen: 29 pints

red raspberries, frozen: 14 quarts, 5 pints

basil, frozen: 6 recipes butter-walnut pesto

Lodi applesauce: 54 quarts (22 frozen, 32 canned)

onions, caramelized, frozen: 2 pints, 6 half-pints

corn, frozen: 12 quarts, 14 ½ pints

blackberries, frozen: 16 quarts, 4 pints

chickens, frozen: 23

green beans, frozen: 21 5-cup quarts

Yet to come are more tomatoes, red raspberries, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and grapes.

Some notes to my 2012 self:

*Drying nectarines at lower temps for longer times results in chewier, more candy-like nectarines. Fast and furious gets ‘em too crispy.

*Good job watering the tomatoes regularly—no dry rot!

*I am so in love with this roasted tomato sauce that it’s practically sinful. I’m not sure 47 pints will be enough.

*When choosing between two local orchards, always go with the one that starts with O. The one that starts with an R lets you down every. single. time.

*Sun High peaches are really, really good. Maybe even better than nectarines.

*Leave a little extra space in the top of the jars when canning salsa—the raw veggies do a funky expansion thing that causes the insides to leak out and then you have to recan the jars and you know that that’s always a bummer.

*Tomato jam—make it.

*Cut-into-pieces chicken is easy to do and much more accessible for meal prep.

*I know you’re frustrated with green beans—3 separate plantings and 3 pounds of seed for a paltry 21 quarts, I know. But you need green beans, like 100 quarts. So keep trying.

*Plant ounces of spinach, like 2 or 3 of them. Be extravagant. Aim for at least 30 quarts.

*To make tomato juice, put the tomatoes through the Victrola cold! There’s no need to cook them first! The uncooked juice, despite separating out in the jars and looking kinda gross, has a fabulously fresh taste.

*Too much sugar in Lodi sauce will ruin it, doofus.

This same time, years previous: topping for apple crisp

This is what I’ve had for lunch for the past two days. It makes my heart sing.

I got the idea from the trailer for Pioneer Woman’s cooking show. It’s just chunked up tomatoes and minced onions with a vinegar, oil, and—this is key—brown sugar dressing. Plus, basil and parsley.

When I fix it for my lunches, I add feta and perhaps some green olives (black would be good, too), and I butter a piece of sourdough toast and use it like a spoon to scoop up the tomato chunks and to sop up all the juices at the end. Though yesterday I just picked up the bowl and poured the vinegary sweetness directly down my throat.

This dish is reminiscent of a tomato platter my mother used to make. Except that my clearest memories are not of her making it, but of my friend Amber’s mother, Ann, serving it at lunch (or supper) one day when we were visiting. I see the large kitchen table, a picnic table, planted squarely in the middle of the blue and white linoleum checkered kitchen floor, a quaint, well-worn cloth draped over the red wooden slats, little cloth napkins at each plate and jelly glass jars to drink out of. As for the tomatoes, the giant, juicy red and yellow slices were dotted with minced onion and celery, sprinkled with brown sugar and S&P, and drizzled with cider vinegar. Eye candy, they were.

(I’m cringing because Amber, Valerie, and Shelah, all sisters, read this blog and are probably yelling at their computer screens: YOU HAVE IT COMPLETELY WRONG, DORK. Oh dear. I can’t help it that I’m getting old and each new year stretches my memory just that much thinner. I do my best, promise.)

Maybe my mom learned to make this recipe from Ann? Maybe she moaned and smacked her lips and asked questions and took thirds so enthusiastically that that’s how I remember the tomatoes? Perhaps.

Anyway, Ree’s little tomato salad invoked all those old-fashioned flavors and sweet memories and now I’m slightly obsessed with it.

I’m going to feast on this salad as long as summer lasts. And that’s a fact.

Fresh Tomato Salad

Inspired by Ree of The Pioneer Woman

I do not measure for this salad. The tablespoon jargon is just to give you a feeling.

The list looks way longer than it actually feels. Don’t be daunted.

1 large, fresh, juicy red tomato, cut into large chunks

1-2 teaspoons minced onion

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

1-2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1-2 teaspoons brown sugar

salt

black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1-2 tablespoons feta

2-3 olives, green or black, torn into bits, optional

Toss together the tomato and onion. Put the oil, vinegar, sugar, and S&P into a pint jar and shake till combined. Drizzle over the tomato. Sprinkle with the herbs, feta, and optional olives. Serve with buttered toast for scooping and sopping.

Serves one very happy camper.

This same time, years previous: buttery basil pesto, basil pesto