You may not have heard, but Two just had a rather exciting birthday (meaning, in her particular case, a birthday). We westerners decided to host our own festivities with Two's birthday twin, sweet Grandma N. Happy celebration fancy activity words recipe:
Approximate Chocolate Cake
2ish sticks butter
1 cups (?) sugar
2½ eggs
1.78 cups sketchy pantry chocolate cake mix
[more than] 1 cup sour cream
Cream together sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time. Alternate sketchy pantry chocolate cake mix and an ambiguous amount of sour cream. Mix until combined. Understand that, whatever you do, there's an 89% chance your sugar-laden cake won't come out of two 9-inch pans. Grease and cocoa them anyway, and divide the batter betwixt.
Cook for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool. Attempt to dislodge cakes from pan. Fail.
Using an over-sized spoon, shamefacedly scoop your cakes onto a distractingly attractive platter. Assemble the slivers into a mound loosely mimicking their intended form. Set aside somewhere you won't have to look at it.
Whip large volumes of heavy whipping cream. While fluffing, add a long dash of almond extract and a smallish amount of sugar (~ a scant ¼ cup to every 1¾ cups whipping cream). Beat until nearly butter.
Separately swish a few pints of good looking berries around a bowl with some sugar until they glisten like a trashy magazine.
Remove your cake-like pile from hiding and quickly dollop all of your whipped cream onto it, making sure to cover the "top" and "sides". Further obscure the cake by piling on the shiny, colorful objects.
Serve with mint. Screw recipes. This $#!% tastes amazing.
You're my hero (and our blog is an excellent distraction from pandemic influenza planning...).
ReplyDeleteHere's something I learned from reading this post. Stifling laughter seems to be a very good ab workout.
ReplyDeleteLove your approach to cooking.
ReplyDeleteCan you write a whole recipe book like this? Please?
ReplyDeletethis MAY have been the best birthday cake I have ever had.......
ReplyDeleteand I have had quite a few.
I also think char is right on target.
a whole recipe book like this would absolutely be a best seller!
(I am not kidding).
it is wonderful, irreverent and SO TASTY!!!!!
sort of 'in your face' which is really FUN!!!!!
I have a blogging friend who calls cakes that need to be scraped out of pans and reassembled on the serving plate 'cake guts'. Apparently this is a problem we all run into at some point in our baking careers. I'm convinced that this is how trifles came into existence.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very intriguing theory. I like it.
DeleteYes, recipe book. Also, my cooking sometimes goes like this, lately less, because unlike your cake, my approximate cooking mostly leads to fairly blandn and unfortunate food. (Maybe because it's mostly done when none of the right ingredients can be found in the house?)
ReplyDelete