Minimum daily chocolate requirement
There were no howls from the hellhound crate last night. I woke out of a few dreams that there were, but . . .
However the car is still dead. If I am going to choose between an ailing car and an ailing hellhound, I will take the ailing car, yes. But I would prefer to decline responsibility for either one. And the weather is still filthy. Yesterday Peter borrowed a charger and a Very Long Lead from one of his neighbours and we-which is to say mostly he-connected all the bits and we ran the Very Long Lead through the mail slot in the front door of the cottage* to the nearest mains plug which of course was full, and I then, speaking of Snow Queen Breath and filthy weather, stuffed a dog towel around it AND taped the bath towel over the door again overnight. Hellhounds and I went for a town walk this morning because one of the Basic Dreads on my Basic Dread list is having your means of transportation conk out on you somewhere other than in your own driveway/stableyard/town, but we all piled hopefully into the car at lunchtime when the weather was too unspeakably foul to want to walk down to the mews-oh, I left out the part where while I took all the bits apart again it started to sleet and I imagine battery chargers don’t really like being sleeted on-and . . . the car is still dead. I sat there staring out the windscreen at the interesting mixture of snow, sleet and hail pattering down, and Thought Dark Thoughts. This would happen, of course, on a long weekend.
They did get the quarter. I was forlornly listening to bells yesterday while Peter disapproved of my spanners and unwound several miles of electric cable.
Okay, I need chocolate.
This from blackbear:
MEXICAN CHOCOLATE CAKE
(and by Mexican here, we mean "contains cinnamon and chocolate together.")
1/2 c butter
1/2 c vegetable oil
2 oz unsweetened chocolate (I use Baker's chocolate, but I realize there are cooking purists among you who will demand better, or San Francisco natives who will demand Ghirardelli. It doesn't matter, just so it's unsweetened.)
1 c water
2 c flour
1 tsp soda
2 c sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c buttermilk
2 eggs
Heat the chocolate, butter, oil, and water together until the chocolate melts and it's smooth. Mix your dry ingredients, and stir in your buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Blend it all together with the chocolate mix, and pour into a greased and floured jelly roll pan. Bake 25 min at 350°F.
While it's baking, make the icing. Melt together another stick of butter, another 2 oz chocolate, and 6 Tblspoons of buttermilk. Remove from the heat and add a tsp of vanilla. Then slowly beat in a pound (yes, a pound) of powdered confectioners sugar. Beat it smooth, then pour it on your warm cake mere moments after it comes out of the oven. Let the whole business cool. The edge pieces are the best, because the icing puddles up a little bit at the corners and is to die for.
I’m rigid and whimpering with longing for those corners. I can’t decide if I want to make this when someone is coming for tea, or when someone(s) isn’t. If I snarf all the corners* I will have to stop eating for a week before I can get back into my jeans. But it might be worth it.
I have never seen buttermilk over here, but then as a non-dairy person I don’t look very hard. But back in the days when I did a lot of sour milk things, and didn’t like having most of a quart of leftover buttermilk hanging around in the refrigerator looking at me reproachfully-I know some people drink it, but even in my dairy days this was not an option-I used to do the handy vinegar thing: 1 T vinegar in 1 c milk sours it nicely. I found that you want to give it a little time to do the business, so if you’re making your cake this afternoon, put the vinegar in the milk this morning.
And from rouan:
Okay, here it is: Pumpkin-Chocolate Cake (in my father-in-law's words)
Cake
2 C flour
2 C sugar
4 eggs (medium size)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
3/4 C vegetable oil
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin pie filling
1/2 -1/3 pkg mini choc chips (12 oz size)*
topping
1/4 C sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Mix all ingredients together. Pour into greased tube pan. Sprinkle topping mixture on top - I always add more choc. chips after I sprinkle. Bake at 350 (F) for 45 min. (mine usually takes 5-10 min longer). Test with toothpick - when it comes out just about dry, it's done.
* I've never really measured the amount of choc. chips I mix in with the batter.
This doesn't need frosting at all, it's very moist and quite delicious! Hope you like it.
A post about gooey indulgence is a funny place to start writing about dietary restrictions, but hey. It’s looking at recipes that brings it up.
Any other non-dairy people out there, these days if I’m making something with buttermilk in it mostly I use water, with the vinegar. (Note: any mild ordinary vinegar will do. Don’t use the balsamic.) I may raise the butter quantity a little if I’m afraid the substitution will make the result taste thin.*** Non-dairy? Butter? Huh? When we get the recipe wiki going, I should put all this once in one place. I’ve said before in the blog that a high percentage of us milk intolerants can have butter, because it’s the milk proteins that are the commonest problem. I can eat butter. And, believe me, I do. I can also, I find, have a little cooked milk, like in a cake, so if we have house guests so there’s milk in the house anyway, I’ll probably use it. My point is that it’s often worth experimenting around your shortcomings. The people I worry about† are restricted-diet people who don’t like to cook-who don’t like playing with their food, which is what it comes down to really.
I’ve had two or three wistful emails from blog-readers on very restricted diets. This isn’t what this blog is or the wiki is going to be about, but I’m extremely sympathetic. It was a vicious enough ugly illegitimate gremlin when I only wasn’t having dairy; it’s gone right over the edge into deadly evening-out-destroying territory now that I don’t have tomatoes either-tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers and (you botanists, look the other way here) mushrooms, the nightshade family (plus fungi), which are implicated in rheumatic type aches and pains. I miss tomato sauce (but nowhere near as badly as I miss cheese) but my hands now close again, even when I get up in the morning. And Italian restaurants make me feel the way most het women feel looking at George Clooney or Johnny Depp††, but that’s life.
So my second point is that any of you on restricted diets out there who have found good recipes for yourselves, especially ones you can also feed your less dietarily challenged friends, please feel welcome to post them here.
And, speaking of restricted diets, this is probably as good a place as any to mention: http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/ , which ssshunt sent in response to the cornmeal recipes a little while ago. When I took the hellhounds off all wheat, including spelt and kamut†††, for a fortnight, I took me off too for about a month, to see if it had any effect on any of our peculiar digestions‡. I am, I admit, extremely relieved to report that it did not‡‡, but glutenfreegirl’s are lovely recipes, and I think overdependence on anything is probably a good thing to avoid, wheat tends to be ubiquitous, and there are a lot of other admirable grains out there . . . and, amazing to relate, you can get through a day without any cereals whatsoever! Film at eleven.‡‡‡
* When I moved in, there was a mail box bolted to the railing. It was too small to hold, say, a set of galleys, and it had the unattractive habit of bursting open and throwing everything on the ground^ on days there were 1,000,000 catalogues stuffed in it. I rejoiced when I had the mail slot put in the door. The need to run an electric flex through the door for car charging purposes did not enter my calculations.
^ It was particularly prone to this behaviour on rainy days. Naturally.
** Peter is hopelessly normal and well-adjusted about food. If I want all the corners, he’ll let me have all the corners.
*** Mustn’t have thin in a chocolate recipe.
† You’ll have noticed there’s a wide streak of Jewish mother in my character. I don’t know where the genes came from, but hey.
†† I’ll take Wesley Snipes
††† Both more ancient forms of wheat and therefore easier to digest: they are too
‡ And yes, I do wonder what the karma is about that I should find myself with hellhounds whose digestions are even more deranged than mine. But I have a stress level. The average pet dog's stress level concerns which side he's going to lie on for the next nap. Right? Left? Or maybe it's time to lie on his back with all four legs in the air. Decisions, decisions.
‡‡ Although I also admit it was a slightly mixed-feelings relief. If wheat had been the answer, at least there would have been an answer.
‡‡‡ Film at ten, here in England, but even after eighteen years here that has never acquired quite the proper ring to it.