It was time for our morning reading and Yo-Yo and Miss Becca Boo wouldn’t stop picking at each other. After repeatedly telling them to be quiet and then slamming my fist on the table and using my “megaphone voice” (my sister-in-law’s term), I finally recalled what my girlfriend Linell told me that her mother did when Linell and her sister wouldn’t stop bickering: window washing.

I stomped off to the bathroom and came back with two wet rags and a sheet of newspaper for each child. “Yo-Yo, you’re to do the outside and Becca Boo, you do the inside. You are going to wash windows until you can get along and I don’t care how long it takes you. I have a lot of dirty windows.”

They were laughing before they even started, and they finished in about four minutes.

The rest of our reading time progressed smoothly.

Just last week I noticed that my food dehydrator has a setting for “Living Foods”. Huh, I thunk to me-self. What could that be? Crickets? It wasn’t until a few more minutes of absent-minded puzzling that it hit me: Yogurt! By gum, that setting is for yogurt!

I never said I was the smartest babe in the woods.

I first experimented with one quart jar of prepared warm milk. It set up into a lovely yogurt in only three hours. The second time I made yogurt, I doubled the amount (two quart jars, not a half-gallon jar), and once again it worked like a charm.

Do you realize what this means, people? It means that I can make at least four, maybe six, quarts of yogurt in only about four hours! All this time I have been putzing along, turning out a single quart of yogurt at a time, sometimes making as many as four different batches in a week.

My life has been simplified and it only took me a year to figure that out.

Crickets, huh.

Update, For Lily Girl:
The dehydrator actually has a setting for “living foods” (105 degrees) and for “yogurt” (115 degrees). I totally missed seeing the setting for yogurt and it wasn’t until I saw the setting for living foods that I realized I could make yogurt in the dehydrator. Like I said, I’m rather slow.

The dehydrator functions in two ways: it uses electricity to raise the compartment’s temperature, and it has a fan that blows around the hot air, helping to dry out the food. Even though the fan is blowing while I’m incubating the yogurt, it is not drying out the yogurt because the jars are tightly lidded. It is the hot air part of the dehydrator that is at work, slowly “cooking” the yogurt. Does that make better sense?

And by the way, I think I could easily fit eight quart jars in the dehydrator, and maybe even use half-gallon jars, too. It’s a fabulous machine.

I was going to do a post about something profound, like the benefits of composting or how to get your kids to love each other, but then I took a bite of Mocha Pudding Cake and gained a new appreciation for the word “profound”. Glory be!

I didn’t think I was one to favor pudding cakes. I enjoy cakes and I enjoy puddings, but I couldn’t see the point of putting them together in the same dish. It reminded me of those adulterated jars of swirled peanut butter and grape jelly that you find in the grocery store. Peanut butter is good and jelly is good, but in my opinion they are meant to be stored separately and smeared together just minutes before eating.

Such was my thinking about cake and pudding. Until now.

In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that my sentiments about cakes and pudding were totally unfounded as I don’t think I had ever even tasted a pudding cake before today, thus proving that I am not above passing judgment on things of which I know nothing. While confessing to my cake-n-pudding close-mindedness might, under normal conditions, be just slightly embarrassing, it’s not at all difficult at this moment, probably due to the splendid creamy rich warm feeling that is zipping through my veins.

Oh my word! I just put it together! You know how in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory when they are all floating down the chocolate river in the pink candy boat and Wonka reaches over the side and scoops up some of the liquid chocolate and gives it to Charlie and his grandpa to drink?

“Charlie put the mug to his lips, and as the rich warm creamy chocolate ran down his throat into his empty tummy, his whole body from head to toe began to tingle with pleasure, and a feeling of intense happiness spread over him.“

I find it practically providential that, even before making the connection between Wonka’s liquid chocolate river and this cake, I used the very same adjectives. I’m telling you, this cake verges on the magical. For real.

Goodness, I do have a buzz. It’s a bit unnerving how this cake has loosened my tongue (and fingertips). I better quit writing before I start blithering about things more consequential than food.

Mocha Pudding Cake
From Nicole’s blog, Brewed Daily

I used decaffeinated coffee (and made it extra strong) so I could freely eat this cake anytime, night or day.

Choose your cake-eating companions wisely because you never know what secrets might come pouring out of your mouth once the chocolate hits your blood stream.

Update, February 10, 2015: I made this today and think it’s awful. Flat-tasting and blah. Perhaps because there is hardly any fat in it? I like the concept of a pudding cake, but this is one doesn’t cut it. At least not anymore.

3/4 cup flour
2/3 cup sugar
½ cup powdered cocoa, divided
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup milk
3 tablespoons oil
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cup hot coffee

In an ungreased square 8-inch pan, stir together the flour, white sugar, 1/4 cup cocoa, salt, and baking powder. Add the milk and oil, stir till combined, and smooth out the batter.

In a small bowl mix together the brown sugar and remaining 1/4 cup cocoa. Sprinkle it over the cake. Add the vanilla to the hot coffee and pour over the top the batter. Do not stir.

Bake at 375 degrees for 25-35 minutes. Serve warm, with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

If you are in danger of scarfing down more than is appropriate, store the cake in the jelly cupboard where it will (mostly) be out of sight.