Too Many Recipes No. 5 Devil's Food Cake

This is the fifth in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

Note the incredibly professional cake decorating skills!

I have to say, this was one of the recipes I was really looking forward to making when I started working my way through this recipe book.  In fact I think I have been looking forward to making it since I was 15, when I wrote it into my book.  It sounds so wonderfully decadent and promising and full of all sorts of evil.  All the things one looks for in a really good chocolate cake splurge.  I mean, if you're going to have chocolate cake, you might as well go all out, right?  Although, if we're really talking about a choc splurge, the ultimate trip would be a little number I have in one of my 'real' cookbooks called "Death By Chocolate" by Marcel Desaulniers.  A deadly little number indeed.  Just preparing the thing would do me in.  The recipe is broken up into sections, with stages allocated across three days.  That's three days to make one cake.  I wouldn't be letting anyone eat that one in a hurry.  I can imagine the shrieks "Are you mad?  That thing took me three whole days of my life to make.  And you think you can just eat it?" Death indeed!

Fortunately, this recipe is rather less complex and came together in quite a lot less time.  About ten minutes should do the trick.  No need for shrieking or death curses.  Phew!  Another 45 minutes in the oven, a bit of time to cool and decorate and we were done.  As has happened on more than one occasion, I caved into the pressure of my gathered 'peeps' (as it seems they are now being called) and carved into this cake within mere moments of its magnificent completion.  Lots of oohs and aahs and "Is that my piece?".  Just time to put the kettle on for a cup of tea to wash it down and we were in.

Some cakes are at their absolute best when they're really, really fresh, like my good friend the Raspberry Chocolate Cake (aka recipe no. 3).  That one has become a favourite here and was given special status as my birthday cake a couple of weeks ago, although this time I topped it with fresh raspberries and it was magnifique!  The old Devil's Food Cake does not come into this category however, preferring a few hours at the very least in which to settle into its rightful wickedness.  Thus we were all a little disappointed with our first taste.  The flavours just didn't seem to come together that well and it was overwhelmingly, well.....chocolatey and sweet.  Do you know what I mean?  So I popped it into the fridge and left it to get on with a little alchemy.  And it worked a treat.  Several hours later and another cup of tea with a snippet of cake on a nice little plate and all the flavours had melded quite satisfactorily, the cream in the middle had had time to make acquaintance with the strawberry jam (just a little something I had whipped up the day before) and the chocolate flavour had become deeper and  less overbearingly sweet. Much, much better.  Still not the kind of thing I would whip up for a day-to-day cake but something to save for a special occasion perhaps, or to share with a gaggle of chocolate cake loving friends.

Now onto the music.  I was thinking along the lines of Devil Went Down To Georgia, an obvious choice and I will admit to loving this song in the early 80s whilst in my tender youth so it was a treat to watch this clip and listen to all that fine ol' fiddlin' once again.  But then I have been thinking lately about a song by Sam Brown from about 1990 (if the shoulder pads are anything to go by) and the smoothness of her voice seems to match the smoothness of this cake.  So there are your choices for today.  Go choose, set up another tab so you can listen and read at the same time, put your devil horns on and we shall proceed with the recipe.

Devil's Food Cake

Ingredients

1 tbsp vinegar

1 cup undiluted Carnation evaporated milk*

1 1/2 cups self raising flour (or use plain flour with 3 tsp baking powder)

pinch of salt

1/2 cup cocoa

1 1/2 tsp bi-carb soda

1 1/4 cup sugar

2/3 cup melted butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

*If you're not familiar with it, evaporated milk is a sweet little concoction found in the supermarket.  Carnation is the brand most commonly found here and is the one I remember Mum buying. In fact, I suspect this recipe is from Carnation, judging by the emphasis on the name in the original recipe.  More than likely it was from a label off a tin many moons ago. You would probably find it somewhere close to the UHT milks.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit) 
• Grease 2 x 8" (20cm) cake tins and line the bases with baking paper or brown paper.  See here for more info.
• In a small bowl, add vinegar to the Carnation milk.  In a large bowl sift flour, salt, cocoa and sugar.  Pour in melted butter and 1/2 of Carnation milk.  Beat well for 2 minutes.
• Add remaining milk, eggs and vanilla and beat a further 2 minutes.
• Pour into 2 x 8" (20cm) cake tins and bake 35 - 40 minutes.
• Allow to cool slightly before removing cakes from their tins
• When completely cool, spread jam (if you like) over the top of one cake then whipped cream.  Top with the second cake then ice with chocolate icing.
• Decorate as you please, ignoring my magnificently dodgy efforts. (I put my name down for a series of cake decorating classes at high school many many years ago and made it through almost half of the first session until it became apparent to both my teacher and myself that I had, and still have, no real aptitude or patience for that level of fiddling around with little bits of icing.  We both agreed that I would be much happier and 'at home' in the pottery rooms so off I went and spent the remaining classes happily pottering away and singing along quite loudly to the radio, which I could because I was the only one in there.  Happy times!)
• Pop the whole shebang into the fridge for a couple of hours to do its thing.

What's to like about this cake:

• It is quick, easy and gives a good chocolatey result, thanks to the 1/2 cup of cocoa.
• It sounds impressive, although you kind of know that any food that includes the word 'devil' in the title is going to be bad news for your figure.

What's not to like:

• This is a coarse crumbed cake with quite a dense texture which makes it heavy.  You really only want one piece and you're done.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you're after a light fluffy sponge, this recipe is not going to give it to you.  Go with the Raspberry Chocolate Cake instead.
• As mentioned above, you know it's not going to be kind to your waistline, but I say "all things in moderation".

Oh The Places You'll Go!

After yesterday's post on one of the most awful days I've had in a while, I have been searching all my experience and knowledge of myself and of the world, trying to find where I am going wrong.  Because surely life should not be like this.  And then, thanks to a friend, I found this little gift on youtube - a magical and unique telling of my family's absolute favourite Dr Seuss book "Oh The Places You'll Go".  I do believe I could watch this every morning of the year and still be inspired by it.

It reminds me that life can be great, that amazing things can happen and just as importantly, that we all go through slumps and that, as the great man says "When you're in a slump you're not in for much fun and unslumping yourself is not easily done".  So self -forgiveness is all important and therefore I am turning down the volume on that voice in my head that is telling me I am doing things wrong and I am tuning out, for a while, to a whole heap of voices from the media, the internet and from the fickle world of facebook that purport to provide self-help advice, when in fact self-promotion may better describe their motivation, and I am tuning in to my family, my self, (the one that really does know what is best for me) and letting in a big dose of self-forgiveness for messing up today and an even bigger dose of self-love so I can be more on track to getting things right tomorrow.

Full credit to 'Spirit Tokens of the Ling Qi Jing.  It has never let me down in times of need.

Days like this should not be allowed to happen.

How is it that life can go from relative efficiency and organisation (and the key word here is 'relative' as my life is never really efficient or organised, despite the collection of books on the subject weighing down my bookshelves) to a state of utter chaos, unhappiness and screaming children, in the space of a couple of days? That is the question pummelling it's way into my brain at the moment.  Is it an astrological thing hovering over our household? What the heck is going on?  In desperation I consulted 'Spirit Tokens of the Ling Qi Jing' by Ivan Kashiwa for guidance, asking it the question "How do I find my way out of this chaos and unhappiness?"  This is the answer I got:
"The matter you ask about will become further complicated before you receive help.  (Great!) If you share the problem with someone, it will be resolved satisfactorily.  But if you isolate yourself, you will find you cannot do it alone.  While you find yourself without help, you should delay things for a while."


I am not good at sharing problems or asking for help.  I am excellent at isolating myself and trying to go it alone.    Do you know the story of The Little Red Hen?  Me.  Me.  Me. And probably millions of other women out there. And maybe some men too. Although actually, she did ask for help didn't she, but no-one wanted to help her.  Not much incentive in that story to ask for help then. But I cannot leave this piece of advise unheeded so I am kind of cheating here.  Or maybe not. Instead of asking just one person over the phone, which I absolutely could not do anyway, I am asking all of you, "How do you find your way out of chaos and unhappiness when or if it hits your household?"  Please don't tell me I need to be more organised.  I already know it and have failed so many times in my attempts to get there that I have all but given up.

Think that maybe until I find an answer, I'll make some lunch and put everyone to bed for a nice afternoon nap.  Maybe things will be brighter afterwards.  Not one of my better days.

Too Many Recipes! 4. Apricot Bran Loaf

This is the fourth in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

After our rather sugar laden past few weeks, this cake came as a bit of dietary relief.  It is the sort of recipe that I generally look for - something with a bit of fruit in it so that I can pretend that it is healthy and not feel so bad if I eat a little too much.  And this one has bran too so it has to be kind of a healthy option. Yes?  It has a nice bit of sweetness to it without being loaded with sugar, thanks to the apricots. This is not the recipe though, to cook up if you're looking for indulgence - unless you are on a really, really strict diet and this cake actually looks like an indulgence.  If that's the case, then go for it and enjoy.  

It kind of made me think of ploughman's lunches and mugs of ale taken by the fire whilst watching a bit of Morris Dancing.  Can't say exactly why but there you have it.  Perhaps that should be a clue for this week's music link.  Well, it wasn't going to be but here you go anyway - a bit of Morris Dancing from Oxford and I have to say that it does kind of capture the mood of this cake.  I can well imagine being in the street and watching this, then popping in to a local tea shop for a cup of tea and a slab of Apricot Bran Loaf.  The music link I intended to put up was the song I was singing to myself while I was baking and that, dear reader, is this one from They Might Be Giants.  I love this song.  I love They Might Be Giants.  I love that my children also like their music and so we all get to enjoy it together.

But I digress.  Choose your link wisely, in a different tab of course, so you can read and listen at the same time and we shall proceed.

Apricot Bran Loaf

Ingredients:

120 g dried apricots

1tsp bi-carb soda

1 cup boiling water

60 g butter

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1 1/2 cups bran  (I used oat bran as I couldn't find wheat bran when I went shopping)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius (375 degrees Fahrenheit) and grease an 8" x 4" (20 x 10cm) loaf tin, lining the base with grease proof paper.  A little aside here, if you read last week's recipe, you may recall that I had a bit of a flashback about my mum re-using brown paper bags to line her cake tins so this week I tried it and have to report that, not only was it  extremely satisfying but it worked a treat as you will see in the above photo.  

Chop the apricots up into small-ish pieces, depending on how chunky you want your cake to be and put to soak in a small bowl with the bi-carb soda and boiling water for half an hour.  

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then beat in the egg.  Add walnuts, stir in apricots and the remaining liquid, the sifted flour and bran.  Mix well to produce a fairly stiff cake mixture.  Tip it all into your loaf tin and bake for around 40-45 minutes.  

Leave in the tin for 5 minutes or so before putting it on to a rack to cool.  Slice off chunks and spread with butter. (We didn't bother with the butter.  It was good enough without but you could if you wanted to.)

What's to like about this cake:  

• It's a really easy, fuss-free recipe.  Just remember to soak the apricots beforehand.
• A good cake to have on hand for a fairly healthy bit of morning or afternoon tea.

What's not to like:

• It was a bit on the crumbly side once it cooled down completely.  Perhaps it just needs to be eaten while it's still a bit warm.

This moment - fresh as a daisy

(this moment) - a beautiful idea from Amanda Blake-Soule at soulemama.  A Friday ritual.  A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment.  A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.

Too Many Recipes! 3. Raspberry Chocolate Cake

This is the third in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

The original name of this cake in my recipe book is a Basic Chocolate Cake.  I feel it deserves so much more so I have taken the liberty of re-naming it.  Heck!  It's my book.  I get to do what I want!  Henceforth and forever more, let this cake be known as The Raspberry Chocolate Cake.  It is, indeed, basic to put together, which is a blessing for when we don't have much time and/or an almost walking 13 month old is hanging on to our leg, but this cake was so very good it disappeared very quickly indeed.  I actually had to make a second one because the first one was eaten before I had time to ice it, let alone photograph it.  And that was also a blessing because.....well, it was a double blessing actually because it meant that we got to enjoy it all over again and also because it gave me a sense of what the cake was like so I had an idea of how to embellish it as the recipe gave no instructions for icing or decoration.
And now to the music to go with this fine cake.  I have to confess I actually wasn't thinking of, or listening to music this time around.  I thought about linking to My Friend The Chocolate Cake (is that not a wonderful name for a band?) but that is just way too obvious....although I did just link to it didn't I?  Instead, I thought that today I would lead you to this song by an American folk singer, Elizabeth Mitchell.  We listen to a fair bit of her music here but this song in particular is one of my favourites and always lifts my mood.  So now you have a choice.  As always, I will give you a moment to choose your link and settle in with your music, remembering of course, to open the link in a different tab so you can read and listen at the same time......................................................   and, away we go.

Raspberry Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
125 g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp raspberry jam
1tbsp boiling water
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour (or substitute with plain flour and 3 tsp baking powder)
1/2 cup milk


Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius / 375 degrees Fahrenheit, adjusting accordingly if you have a fan-forced oven which, I may have mentioned before, I do not.
Grease a lamington tin or 2 x 8" (20cm) sandwich tins and line the base with baking paper if you feel so inclined, which I usually do because even though I grease cake tins well, cakes always seem to stick to the base if I don't line them with paper.  I have just, in this very moment, had a flashback of Mum cutting cake tin linings from brown paper bags which was a good way of recycling them and saved buying baking paper.  That is what I was brought up with but had forgotten all about it until now.  Gosh, it's a long time since I've done that.  Anyway, I digress.  Sorry about that. So back to the making of this cake.....


In a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder, raspberry jam and boiling water to a smooth paste and leave to cool.
Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well as you add each one.  Add the chocolate mixture and stir that in. 
Now sift the flour at least three times - yes, three.  And yes it does seem to make a difference so is worth doing.  Add this to the cake mixture alternately with the milk and you will have a lovely light cake mix that tastes just delicious.  However, resist the temptation to eat it all raw and pour it into your prepared cake tin/s.  Bake for around 30-40 minutes, keeping an eye on it for the last bit.  Allow to cool, then either eat or decorate it.
I cut the cake into two layers and spread some raspberry jam and whipped cream, then topped it off with some basic chocolate icing and chopped up strawberries, lightly dusted with sifted icing sugar.  I had planned to pile it with fresh raspberries since they are coming into season now but at $11.50 a punnet I was a little (!!!) put off and opted for strawberries instead which did a very decent job.

What's to like about this cake?  Everything.  Easy to make and even easier to eat.
What's not to like?  Honestly cannot think of a thing unless one is on a diet.

Where did it all come from

I think I had what would be called a panic attack today.  Shaking, wanting to throw up, wanting to scream and yell all the words that are saved for my darkest times, crying at the feeling of disgust I felt welling up in my stomach.  The cause?  Well, we have a room at the back of the house which is generally the children's toy room but also serves as a lovely warm sunroom in cooler weather.  I have a beautiful old miners couch against one wall so I can sit with a cup of tea and some knitting and look out into the back garden.  It's a quiet place to rest sometimes when the children are having an afternoon sleep.  Being a toy room it also, as one would expect, has toys in it, along with a bookshelf and cupboards to store our home-ed materials - workbooks, drawing books, art supplies, all that sort of thing.  It is a small room and tends to get messy quite often which is annoying (to put it mildly) but I usually manage to organise a team effort to tidy up, sometimes it seems easier to do it by myself or some days it seems to work best if I just close the door and walk away.

Today though, the three older children were having a sleep while the youngest one stayed up with me.  I haven't put my head in the back room lately.  Mainly because there is something behind the door that means I can't open it fully - a fair indicator that things are not going to be good  if I do go inside.  I've managed to avoid going in there or thinking too much about how bad it might be.  Today though, it was really the only room Marta and I could be in since it was raining outside, the sewing room was not a room I wanted to be in with an inquisitive 13 month old at that particular time (read: when I didn't want to have to bother about what she was getting into and stopping her from ripping my beautiful and much treasured craft books) and David was asleep on the couch in the loungeroom.  So off to the back room we went.

Well, I couldn't get to the miners couch, and even if I could have, there was no room on it to sit down.  The floor was covered in cushions, more cushions, toys, toys, toys and an odd assortment of ....well......, rubbish.  Plastic containers that the boys had purloined from the kitchen to hold collections of boy treasures were strewn about, most of them empty (the contents, it seemed, were mostly on the floor) along with papers, bits of Lego(even though the Lego has supposedly been packed away for four weeks because it was still not packed up after repeated (like, ten) requests last time it was out), wooden blocks, cast off clothes, a special handmade cloth doll I had bought Marta for her first birthday only a month ago..... Actually, that is when the panic attack started to kick in.  Seeing Marta's beautiful doll that I had given her to be her 'particular' doll, left on the floor by her big sister who had been playing with it, under a pile of cushions was like a smack in the face.  The whole scene just screamed at me that my children do not value what they have.  And that was another smack in the face because it means that I have failed somewhere in teaching them this.  I know that I am often saying to them that we must look after what we have but that message is very clearly not being taken in.  I am obviously not modelling that behaviour well enough myself.

So I began to pick up more cushions to make a clear space on the floor so I could see the level of damage.  And that is when the second wave of  panic overtook me.  Toys, bits of toys, things they had really, really wanted at one time or another, pencils, textas with lids off, a 300 piece jigsaw puzzle started but scattered across the floor after maybe 20 pieces were joined.  All of it just left there, with absolutely no thought for looking after what they have, and indeed, all piled over with cushions.  It was this obvious excess that filled me with disgust and literally had me wanting to throw up.  When it is all packed away it doesn't seem like so much but having it spread all over the floor made it clear just how much stuff we have in that small room.

With assistance from Marta (she found all the lidless textas for me!) I started sorting through it all, throwing a lot of things I would normally have just put away, into rubbish bags.  Every time I find myself on my knees tidying up this room I tell myself "I am not going to do this again". But of course I do.  Today, when I said it, I meant it.  This stuff was going.  I ended up with four shopping bags that went straight into the bin before prying eyes could inspect them.  A lot more things went into a big box destined for the op-shop. At some point I put Marta to bed, made myself a cup of tea and sat down to review the situation.  There had been several waves of panic throughout the time it took to sort out everything into rubbish bags, op-shop boxes and a smaller pile of things that would be kept and put back in the shelves, or packed away for awhile.  It was such an incredibly uncomfortable feeling, so much so that even now, some time later, when the panic has subsided, I still feel close to tears.  Why do we have so much stuff?  And they are constantly asking for the new this or that which, of course they seldom get, but still, we have SO MUCH!!!!

Then there is the nagging thought that Christmas is very near and well intentioned aunts and uncles will give the children more toys, more stuff that will end up in pieces on the toy room floor.  I even started composing a letter to them all explaining that really, the children have enough toys and could they please not buy more this Christmas as it is quite overwhelming.  I don't know how well that letter would be received.  And in truth, I would have to send the letter to myself as well since I am just as guilty of buying Lego kits and similar sorts of things around this time of year and at birthdays.

So what is the answer?  Allow the children fewer things?  Impose stricter discipline about how much they may have out at any given time and watch them like a hawk to make sure they pack up each thing as they finish with it?  Ugh, that second option just sounds miserable.  I have read a few articles about a movement called "Simple Living".  This is one I thought was particularly good, from a couple of years ago.  It sounds funny to call it a movement but there you have it.  These are the times we live in.  Perhaps I need to read about some more experiences of it - about people just living with a whole lot less stuff.  The stories I have read have mainly been about people without children.  How do we raise children in this age of consumerism, in a way that teaches them to honour what they have and to actually want less stuff?  It's one thing to impose that kind of rule on them but to teach them to want less is another thing altogether.  Maybe it comes back to modelling the behaviour, which is where I seem to have gone wrong.  Agggghhhhh, it all seems like there is so much thinking to be done about how I want us to live, what values I want the children to grow up with and model all of that more consciously.  Otherwise I'm just adding to the problems of overconsumption that we, in the Western world are so guilty of.  I'll let you know how we get on.