Let Them Eat Cake

I love cake. Cake. Cake. Cake. Yum. Yum. Yum.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to make and eat cake.

Even my friend Ann calls me Johnny Cakes.

Ann Carnahan Batson and me in our college days at JMU

When I was very young, my mom would let me pull up a stool to the

counter so that I could watch and "help" her when she baked.

My Plymouth Rock.

Today, I still have that stool and I treasure it. It is my Plymouth Rock. 

That is where my cooking passion was launched.

Alice, Terry and John John getting to the bottom of it.

From the looks of the photo above, I wasn't the only one who 

enjoyed the cake baking process. Those are my sisters 

Alice and Terry helping me with bowl cleaning duties.

When my sister Alice was learning to bake, she tried and tried and tried 

again to make my Dad a "Miracle Cake" from my mother's Good Housekeeping 

Cookbook. It never came out right. It never did rise. And, truth be told, it 

tasted pretty bad. But then one day, she redeemed herself. 

And she did it in a major chocolate way. 

Alice is telling me she has a plan to redeem herself.

One day, at a back yard picnic in Schenectady, New York, Alice served 

(cue the Angels singing from heaven) a "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate 

Cake. And it was AH-MAZE-ZING. Frosted in white butter cream 

frosting it was the cake of my dreams.

A recent recreation of the Schenectady Redemption

Years later when I searched to find that recipe, I came up empty handed. 

I looked through my mother's battered ( HA! unintentional pun there, but really

 it is, literally! I crack me up sometimes!) Good House Keeping Cookbook, 

but nothing matched. Then, one day earlier this year while looking 

on the back of a Hershey's Cocoa Box there it was. THERE IT WAS!!

The recipe I searched so long to find. I made it for my Dad a few months ago,

and let me tell you , it was just as good as I had recalled. 

Look how dark and rich that cake is. In a word. YUM.

Dad approves!

No need for you to search for the recipe. Here it is:

I am always playing with recipes. Sometimes I have added cinnamon to a 

chocolate recipe to kick it up a notch. Sometimes I add in coffee. Both are 

common tricks. But this time, I played with the frosting. 

When I made the butter cream frosting, instead of milk, I used Bailey's Irish 

Cream Whiskey. The amount of liquid you need is so slight, you don't taste a 

whiskey taste, but you do get  just a hint that the frosting is special. And it makes 

a great compliment to the rich, dark, aaaaawesome chocolate cake.

To make the frosting, I suggest you follow the directions 

on the box of Domino's Powdered Sugar. 

( I love that my sister Alice's family calls it Magic Sugar). 

To be honest, it is so easy that 

I haven't followed the recipe in years. 

Frosting

I start with one stick of room temperature butter. 

Add to that 1/4 teaspoon of  salt and some of the powdered sugar. 

Cream the sugar and the butter and the salt together. It will be dry.

Add in a little ( a tablespoon or two) Bailey's Irish Cream or use milk

( if you use milk, you need to add in a teaspoon of flavoring like vanilla. 

This will turn the sugar and butter mixture in to a gooey paste. 

Add in more powdered sugar until you get the fluffy consistency you 

are looking for. If it gets too dry, add a little more liquid. 

Be sure the cake is completely cool before you frost it or the butter 

will melt, the frosting will liquefy will  and the frosting will run off the cake.

Give this cake a try sometime. It may not be a "Miracle Cake", 

but if you ask me, this cake is heavenly.