February 12, 2017

Crazy Chocolate Cake

February 12, 2017/ Blair Cowan

2017 has been a busy one so far. Despite the fact that yesterday was spent curled up on the couch, listening to the wind outside and reading my book for the better part of the day, we’ve been busier than usual in our neck of the woods, with protests, rallies, work events, and a cheeky girls’ trip to Paris already in the bag. This weekend we’re heading to Bath to celebrate Valentine’s Day a little early, and then seeing my favourite band in concert in Glasgow on actual Valentine’s Day evening, so I'm gearing up for another week of awesome. With such a busy month, I was stoked to find a recipe that dirtied only one bowl, was totally delicious (and tasted ‘complete’) even without frosting, required no ingredients I didn’t already have in my pantry AND let me try out a new and weird way of making a cake. Basically, this is the perfect thing to make when you’re craving chocolate cake but trying not to go overboard on labour, ingredients, time or dishes (Oh, and it's dairy-free, in case that was one of your goals for 2017!).

Relatedly, every time I pull a recipe out of the recipe box and it has a title with 'crazy' or 'impossible' or 'unbelievable' in it, I am immediately suspicious that the recipe will contain something weird, like mayonnaise or gelatin or courgettes or Oleo. But this one contains only totally normal ingredients!* It's definitely the weirdest technique I've used to make a cake in recent memory, but it's easy and leaves you with only one dirty bowl, and it's so delicious I'm already thinking up excuses for making another one.

*Recipe does include vinegar, but if you haven't made a chocolate cake with vinegar before, fear not. It seemed so weird to me the first time I made one several years ago (for Judson's 30th birthday) that I phoned my grandmother when I got to that step of the recipe to ask if that seemed normal to her. She assured me that it was, I proceeded, and I quickly learned that the best chocolate cake recipes always contain a spoonful or so of vinegar. The flavour obviously evaporates completely but the texture it leaves behind is moist, light and fluffy- a total win!

The verdict:

4 spoons out of five. Interestingly, Judson, who hates frosting, gave this a three, and I, who literally can't be trusted in front of a bowl of frosting and a spoon, give it a four. I swore I wouldn't do ½ spoons when I started the Recipe Box Project, and it's my blog, so we're going with four spoons. Even Judson acknowledges that 'people who like cake would give it a four or five.'

one year ago: Broccoli So Nice, We Cooked It Twice

the recipe:

Crazy Cake

the directions:

Preheat oven to 175C/350F and grease a 9x9-inch square pan.
Sift flour, then set aside.
Sift cocoa into a separate bowl, then sift flour, cocoa, baking soda, sugar and salt together, directly into the greased pan.
Mixture will likely have a hill in the middle, but try to sift as evenly as possible.
Make three grooves in the dry ingredients with your finger or the handle of a piece of cutlery.
Pour oil into first groove, pour vinegar into second groove and pour vanilla into third groove but DO NOT STIR YET.
Pour cold water over entire mixture, then beat with a spoon until nearly smooth and no visible flour remains (try not to scrape the bottom or sides of the pan too much as you do this).
Bake for 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the middle comes out only slightly sticky.
Once cool, sift powdered sugar or coarse sanding sugar over the cake and serve warm.

the ingredients:

1 ½ c flour, sifted
3 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 c sugar
½ tsp salt
5 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1 c cold water
Optional: powdered sugar or sanding sugar

January 11, 2017

Toll House Marble Squares

January 11, 2017/ Blair Cowan

You're not supposed to mix the chips into the batter. But I misread and sprinkled some in. Don't be like me.

It's been awhile, dear reader. I know that, you know that, and while I'm ashamed to admit the way that I let 2016 get away from me, let's be real: it wasn't a great year for most of the world. On a personal level, I travelled more than I ever have in a single 12 month period (14 trips, 10 of them outside Scotland!), I quit a job that was leading nowhere and acquired a job in my field that I love (all within a week of each other!), and I planned & executed a week-long major event at my workplace- in fun news, I read more books for pleasure in 2016 than I think I have since high school (part of this was an escapism urge, and maybe better used elsewhere); Judson got his UK driver's license (a process that took him two years because of all the hoops we have to jump through) and a much-deserved promotion along with lucrative and fun freelance design gigs, and we got to see friends from all over the world here in Edinburgh.

So maybe that explains a little of why I was in and out of here all throughout last year. I can't claim burnout on something I had done for only a year previously, but starting a new job really took so. much. energy. and then I got used to being able to come home after a long day and relax with a book instead of trying to cook/photograph/edit/write/post and it was a nice change of pace. Previously, throughout the entirety of my adult life I've almost always been looking for a job, so now that I have a job I like, it was a pleasing change of events to not have anything I had to be doing. So with my birthday and the holiday season on the horizon in early November, I resolved to get back in the saddle and start cooking again. In fact, I had a whole celebratory post written about my birthday and the US election and how excited I was about both (I made tiny sugar cookies in the shapes of gingerbread ladies on election day, and I was STOKED). But then when I awoke to the news the next morning, my spirits were crushed and November became more about surviving than it was about writing.

On the bright side, these months off have allowed me to experiment more with the things I love to cook, and Judson and I have never eaten better. From duck & sweet potato rosti to brown butter kimchi ramen, from my (other) grandmother's cinnamon rolls and egg nog to the booziest cranberry sauce I ever accidentally made, it's been a good time to be a resident of the Cowan house.

But I've missed cooking these weird recipes and I've missed Eleanor. I miss engaging with the past in this way and I miss, honestly, the reminder that the world spins madly on. The reminder that other people (other women) have been through good times and bad for eons before me and that we'll continue to survive no matter what the future holds.

So here's a simple recipe for getting back in the saddle. Maybe you've never been much of a 'homemade' type person, maybe you hate cooking, maybe you're trying to cut out packaged foods in the new year, or maybe, like me, the kitchen is an old friend you've just been treating badly for the last few months. Here's a recipe that takes only a few minutes to whip up but will leave you pleased with your efforts and without too many dishes to clean, and your friends will think it's fab that you made them a home-baked dessert... if you decide to share.