Day: December 18, 2004

Entirely evil chocolate cake

Entirely Evil Chocolate Cake

(good for Vegans and people who are lactose intolerant)

You need an 8 x 8 x 2 inch cake pan or 1 large six muffin tin or both if you’re doubling the recipe.

Preheat oven to 350

Dump the following ingredients into a medium sized mixing bowl UNLESS you are doubling the recipe, in which case use a large one.

1 cup white sugar OR firmly packed brown sugar

1 1/2 cups white flour. Pastry flour makes a small but not critical improvement. Sift it? wtf? Don’t bother.

1 tsp baking soda (fresh is best)

1/2 teaspoon salt

AT LEAST two heaping tablespoons of cocoa powder, more if you are a chocoholic. Original recipe calls for three level tablespoons. Ha! I laugh in your moustache!

ground cardamom and/or cinnamon and/or nutmeg to taste. You can omit these but they subtly improve the cake.

Mix these dry ingredients well.

In a (minimum) two cup measuring cup, mix one cup of water, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1 tablespoon of vinegar and five or six tablespoons of vegetable cooking oil (peanut, canola). You can use melted butter or margarine if you’re not feeding vegans, but for this recipe, unlike so many others, it really doesn’t make a difference to the end result. Use a four cup measuring cup if you’re doubling the recipe.

Dump the wet ingredients in the dry ingredients, mix until the lumps disappear, pour into cake pan and cook for 1/2 an hour.

Cool and devour.

This is an adaptation of the Chocolate Cake recipe in the I Hate to Cookbook by the ever entertaining Peg Bracken. Could I but write half as entertainingly as she, I would be a happy woman. Hey, I am a happy woman. Maybe things aren’t so bad.

holiday cheer

The holiday cheer party was very pleasant, and although I could have wished for better music, I couldn’t have gotten better company. I was amused and startled when Rob of Nine, the new guy, turned out to be a tow pilot. I promptly swapped chairs so that he and Paul could clack about aviation together without having to deal with my eye rolling and finger tapping.

After all, I have nearly been turned into complete sky paste by the whirling props of a Lake Amphibian, lo these many years ago, but I still understand and appreciate that my sweetie has a portion of his heart given unto another mistress, she being the cold and unforgiving wench who dares us to fly.

Told a couple of the women at the party to be nice to their menfolks, as they never used work as an excuse to complain about or diss their spouses. Alas, wish I could say the same, although I am getting milder. Chinook of the spirit, blow through me!

I light a candle for Heather’s dad, who has bone cancer and is having a damned rough go of it, and for Rob of Nine’s lady wife, whose name I didn’t ask after, for a speedy recovery from her ailment. I light a candle for Bernie Kerik, may enlightenment break like a jar over his head, for Keith, who was practicing compassion meditation the other day, and I won’t say for whom, and for Katie, who brought home a simply scrumptious young man last night. Not the non-bf. This one goes back to grade school. Cute, intelligent and well spoken. Anyway both Paul and I had an extremely enjoyable talk with him (many times more advanced and friendly than virtually any contact we’ve had with any of Katie’s friends before) and then we crashed out, while listening to Katie giggle almost continuously for about an hour, hm….

Woke up thinking, Jumping Jimmy Christmas, am I going manic again? It’s five am and I feel like going jogging. Did a writing practice (subject, masks) instead. Now I have to clean my room, write out ten topics for sermons, I mean routines, I mean same dif, and think about all the things I’m not doing for Christmas. It’s very peaceful. I did get blackberry jelly, though. Some progress in the xmas department has been made.

Pic is something I spontaneously did at my desk yesterday. It just came flowing out in one piece of automatic writing. What I consider most amazing about this is that I am really really klutzy when it comes to writing and just about everything else and yet this is legible, intelligible and there’s no parts I scratched out.

If you’re one of these people who never drop things, etc., you would find me a real trial. I don’t actually know where my edges are. I find it entertaining that I can keep a car in a lane but I’m constantly banging into people partly because I want to (ha ha) but mostly because I’m severely kinesthetically challenged.