Self-Frosting Chocolate Cake, or, a Chocolate-Flavoured Lie

In the 1960s, the best kind of food was the easiest kind of food, no matter whether it was margarine, Tang, or a cake that frosted itself. Nowadays, I think if you're going to go to the trouble of making a cake, you can probably go to the trouble of frosting it (even if the frosting comes from a can), but I guess if you made a cake every week like a lot of families in the 1960s, you probably got sick of using that much powdered sugar all the time.

I, however, never get tired of frosting, but I don't always have time for that nonsense. So I made a chocolate cake. But not just any chocolate cake: a cake that frosts itself in the oven, inside a skillet. I just love any recipe that involves a skillet, because no matter what, it's always going to look elegantly rustic.

And since I needed a quick dessert for a party and didn't have time to bake a cake, let it cool, and frost it before the party, I whipped up this self-frosting chocolate confection.

But it didn't work. I'm assuming the science of this somehow involves the weight of the ingredients separating in the oven, but I don't understand how the top layer is (supposed to) stay moist and frosting-like. PLUS, I'm not entirely convinced the recipe is written correctly. I know, I know, only a shoddy carpenter blames his tools, but this recipe just comes from some kind of Betty Crocker type of thing, and I've read the recipe over and over and can't figure out what went wrong... beyond the usual 'I substituted half of the ingredients for other ingredients because stuff that was available in the 1960s in the US is not available in 2015 Scotland.'

Anyway, it didn't seem to have its own frosting, but no one complained. This was a delicious cake that tasted more like a dense, chocolatey muffin than a cake. It's a moist, brown-sugar based cake, studded with chocolate chips, toasted walnuts, and a melty chocolate centre. It's the kind of thing you would eat for breakfast if you were on holiday in a country known for its pastries; somewhere like France, or Florence, or Bavaria. Or the kind of thing that makes a perfect dessert on an unseasonably blustery late-spring night in Scotland.

Make this when you need a pick-me-up. After a rough day at work, or an evening after you got stuck coming home in a rainy, traffic-filled, commute. You'll be so pleased with yourself at how easy it is (and so proud of yourself for finding a use for that bottle of chocolate syrup you've had in your fridge since that cookout last summer) that you'll forget all about your troubles when you take your first melty bite, still warm from the oven.

If you are trying to make this cake look pretty, might I suggest not inverting it? The actual top of the cake is much prettier than the bottom (in my experience), and it's going to look much more 'inside-out' after you invert it.

P.S. The original recipe called for '2 envelopes premelted chocolate.' What even is that??

The verdict:

4 spoons out of five. I'm knocking off a spoon because, strictly speaking, this recipe didn't work the way it was supposed to. But I'm keeping it at four because, well, it's delicious.

The recipe:

Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cake

the directions:

Preheat oven to 176C/350F.
Generously grease a 9- or 10-inch ovenproof skillet.
In a large mixer bowl, combine all ingredients except nuts and topping ingredients.
Blend well at low speed, then increase speed to medium and beat an additional 2 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl.
Spread batter into skillet.
Sprinkle with pecans (or be awesome like me and arrange them in a lovely flower pattern).
Combine topping ingredients and pour over batter.
Bake 30-35 minutes until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
Allow to cool 1-2 minutes, then invert onto a serving plate (or, if the top of yours looks like mine, maybe don't invert it as it's going to look less than stellar once it's flipped upside down).
If necessary, scrape sauce from inside pan onto top of cake and serve warm.

the ingredients:

½ c shortening
1 ¼ c flour
½ c sugar
½ c brown sugar
2 ½ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
2/3 c milk
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
½ salted pecan (or walnut) halves

Topping:

½ c chocolate syrup (if you're in the UK and can't find this, you can sub in ¼ c melted milk chocolate with ¼ c water, stirred together and cooled)
½ c warm water
1 tbsp sugar

Sugar Crisps

When I was in university, I spent two summers working for a camp in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky. I learned a lot those summers: how to repair a Slush Puppie machine; that it's possible to survive on mac and cheese and cereal for an entire summer; that Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, if crunched with your mouth open in a totally dark cave, will make visible green sparks. Most importantly, though, I learned the following from my boss: never get mad at someone for breaking something if they do it while they're helping you.

I, for example, broke two hand radios during my first summer working at the camp-- the first, I will always contend, was broken when it was given to me, but the other fell off my belt loop into a creek inside a cave and promptly drowned. My boss teased me mercilessly about the one I claimed arrived in my possession pre-broken, but he never complained once about the one I broke while doing my job of leading a pack of 5th-graders on a cave hike, despite the fact that those radios probably cost more than I made in a month. After I lost the second radio, I remember walking back to camp with butterflies in my stomach, afraid I was about to get in so much trouble for losing my radio, and I'll always remember walking into my boss's office, telling him I had broken it, and waiting for the inevitable scolding. But what happened instead was that my boss cracked up in the biggest belly laugh I've ever seen, came around his desk to give me a hug, and howled 'Tadpole, it's about time you did something embarrassing!' before walking me into a backroom to fetch a brand new radio. I'll never forget the relief I felt when I realised I wasn't in trouble, and I've tried to extend this mentality to other parts of my life ever since.

When I've had friends help me move, I never get mad if a box gets dropped or an item gets broken, because they are just doing the thing I asked them to help me with. When I host a party, I don't get mad about spills or messes, because those are just part of the cost of entertaining.

Eleanor, however, did not agree with this rule, or at least not as it extended to her serveware. Oh, she would use her good china for meals every Sunday after mass, but my mom's most vivid memories of it are the fact that Eleanor would yell at her every time she picked up her glass, swearing that she could hear my mom's teeth clinking against the crystal. Since then, I have held Eleanor's glasses in my own two hands, and although highly delicate, they are not made of snowflakes or gold leaf that's going to collapse at the slightest breath of wind or clink of teeth.

Because of these memories, my mom has always been reticent about using The Good China. So I grew up, like most of my friends did, with china and crystal in a box somewhere in the house, not to be used... ever.

So when Judson and I received beautiful wineglasses and plates that we adored when we got married, we always swore that we would put them to use, not hide them away in a cupboard. And put them to use we have: there isn't a friend we've served dinner to who hasn't sipped wine from our stemware or eaten off of our best plates. So far (touch wood) there have been no grave mishaps that weren't caused by Judson or me (though I recently broke a Le Creuset casserole dish and Judson once broke the lid to a drink decanter), and we love getting to use the plates that would otherwise sit in a cupboard collecting dust.

Don't try to roll out this dough. You'll regret it.

But last week when I was making these cookies and quickly realised the dough was much too soft to roll them out and cut them like I was supposed to, I immediately did the only sensible thing and grabbed a cut crystal engraved whisky glass out of the cabinet and used the base of it, dipped in flour to make pretty shapes on my cookies. Bringing this all full circle, the glass was a graduation gift from my mom, and I just know Eleanor is somewhere in heaven, rolling her eyes and planning all the ways she is going to scold my mom for raising a daughter who uses the good crystal to make floral imprints on the top of my cookie dough. To which I say: the glass came out fine in the end, all in one piece and still lovely as ever.

These cookies are delicious, but I know they are going to fly under the radar because they aren't as pretty as strawberry shortcake or as exotic as lace cookies. Instead, these cookies are a cross between shortbread and your favourite sugar cookie: crisp and crumbly around the edge, but soft and almost cakey in the middle, with a gentle buttery taste throughout that makes them a great candidate for any event where you don't know people's tastes and still want to impress with homemade cookies. They're intended to be rolled and cut with cookie cutters, but my dough was far too soft and sticky for that, so instead I scooped out heaping tablespoons, then dipped a glass with a pretty bottom into flour and pressed it into the rounded scoops of dough. If you don't have a glass with a carved bottom, any glass will do, but your cookies will suffer from looking plain. Just kidding!

The verdict:

3 spoons out of five. These are delicious, and the batch was eaten quickly by the friends to whom we brought them, but it's hard to get more than 3 spoonfuls worth of excited over basic sugar cookies. However, I'll definitely revisit these if I ever need a good sugar cookie recipe, because they definitely take the average cookie and raise it a few notches to the territory of pure elegance.

The recipe:

Sugar Crisps

THE DIRECTIONS:

Sift flour, powdered sugar, and salt into a large bowl.
Cut in shortening and butter with two knives or a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
Drizzle egg and vanilla over dry mixture, mix well and shape into a ball.
Cover bowl tightly with foil and chill 1-2 hours or up to overnight.
When ready to cook, preheat oven to 204C/400F.
Removing only half of the dough from the fridge at a time, scoop heaping spoonfuls of dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Using a drinking glass dipped in flour, press the bottom of the glass into each spoonful of dough, pressing until dough is 1/8 inch thick.
Bake until golden brown around the edges, about 6-8 minutes.

Yields 24-30 cookies.

the ingredients:

1 ¼ c flour
2/3 c powdered sugar
¼ tsp salt
1/3 c Stork or shortening
¼ c butter, room temperature
½ egg, beaten lightly
1 tsp vanilla

 

Mrs. Rhymes' Lemon Squares

Over the weekend, a fellow ex-pat friend of ours had a party to celebrate the fact that he just got his British citizenship. Judson and I went to celebrate with him, masking our jealousy with big smiles, cheap beer, and a batch of lemon squares. When we arrived at the party (which, with great irony and sass, he had themed as an American cookout), his British friends asked us jokingly (over and over) if we were 'ashamed' of him for defecting.

But no matter how many times they asked, it never ceased to shock either of us-- 'ASHAMED?' we would reply, shocked and confused. 'How could we be ashamed? We're just jealous!'*

Anyway, the party involved a whole roast pig, about a hundred boxes of cupcakes, beer pong, cornhole, and Jimmy Eat World songs. In short, it was the most American event I've been to in at least two years.

(It also involved a lot of Pimm's and haggis; Judson and I had to explain the rules to cornhole about a dozen times; the Brits refused to use actual beer to play beer pong with because 'the ball will make the beer dirty before we drink it;' and despite being the last weekend in May, the temperature never rose above 20C/68F, so it wasn't an altogether American party.)

So, in preparation for the party, when I found out we were tasked with bringing a side dish, I knew it was my chance to make a proper American dessert, and that was how I ended up making lemon squares-- my favourite dessert as a teenager. But I've never made lemon squares before, and I was nervous about the curd once I realised it wasn't cooked. Plus, I didn't have the right size dish or a pretty serving platter to take them to the party on... then we walked into the house and saw that someone had provided dozens of boxes of cupcakes from a professional bakery in our neighbourhood... and all we had to offer was a foil-covered cookie sheet covered in powdered sugar. I was embarrassed immediately; no one wants to be the person who brings the dish to the party that no one eats.

But as I set down the platter and pulled back the foil, the host walked by and immediately gasped 'ARE THOSE LEMON SQUARES?!' before grabbing a corner piece and taking a sweet/sour bite. 'THIS,' he said to everyone within earshot, 'THIS is the taste of an American cookout. You have to try one of these, they're my FAVOURITE!' And before I knew it, the cookie sheet was half-empty, and all around me people were covered in a light dusting of powdered sugar, licking it off of their fingers and shaking it off their shirts.

And THAT'S why I don't have any finished pictures of the squares to show you. But seriously, that's how you host a party. I don't know who Mrs. Rhymes was (chances are, Eleanor didn't either as this is just a newspaper clipping dating back several decades), but her lemon squares, with a few moderations, are great. The crust is crumbly, buttery, and delicious, and the filling is just sour enough to deserve a generous dusting of powdered sugar.

The crust, after mixing thoroughly, will be sandy in texture and not stick together at all. Be not dismayed! Just press it into your pan and thank me later.

*Mom: before you panic, understand we're only jealous because it means he never has to apply for another visa. Don't worry, we're not applying for dual citizenship yet.

The verdict:

4 spoons out of five. Once I made the modifications listed below to make the quantities more reasonable, the final product was delicious. (Before modifying the quantities, I ended up with 2/3 more crust than I needed and only 2/3 as much filling as I wanted.) I prefer my lemon squares a little more tart, but Judson thought they were perfect as-is. If you want a slightly more tart square, use one less egg and ¼ c more lemon juice.

Before.

After.

The recipe:

Lemon Squares

THE DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 176C/350F.
Cream butter and sugar until well-blended.
Add flour gradually, beating until mixture resembles fine crumbs.
Dump crumbs into a 15x10x1 cookie sheet and press down until even and packed.
Bake 15 minutes or until slightly browned around the edges.
Remove from oven, but leave oven on.
While crust is baking, make the filling: stir together flour, baking powder, and sugar.
Beat eggs slightly at medium speed.
Add flour mixture and beat until blended.
Add lemon rind and juice, beat until blended, and taste for sweetness.
Pour filling over hot crust and return to oven.
Continue baking until golden brown and set, approximately 15 more minutes.
Upon removing from oven, sprinkle immediately with powdered sugar and allow to cool, adding more powdered sugar before serving if some has absorbed.
Cut with a sharp knife and serve once completely cooled.

the ingredients:
the crust:

2/3 c butter, room temperature and cut into slices
1/3 c sugar
1 1/3 c flour, stirred with a fork

the filling:

7 ½ tbsp flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
2 ½ c sugar
5 extra-large eggs
1 ½ tbsp grated lemon rind
¾ c lemon juice
powdered sugar (for dusting)