The 1 Bowl + 1 Pot = 2 Good To Be So Easy Chocolate Cake

This is an easy one bowl cake that can be dusted with powered sugar and served as is, or you can go the extra step and make the chocolate glaze. I have served it both ways - both are good.

Cake:
Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens, One Bowl Chocolate Cake

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup cooking oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 inch round cake pan with cooking spray (or grease and flour if you prefer).

In a large bowl mix all dry ingredients together. Add all wet ingredients and beat for 2 minutes. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

Cool cake 10 minutes, turn out onto a wire rack and let cake cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar, or coat with frosting/glaze (recipe below).

Glaze:
Adapted from the Thick Chocolate Glaze recipe found in The Joy of Chocolate by Judith Olney

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons hot water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/8 teaspoon salt (pinch)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 or so tablespoons powdered sugar (depends on consistency)

In small pot, combine chocolate, sugar, corn syrup and hot water. Whisk over low heat until smooth - let the mixture come to a slow boil and boil for 3 minutes. Take mixture off heat and stir in butter, salt, vanilla and powdered sugar. Stir until cooled slightly and mixture is a good spreading consistency. It is a glaze so it will not be thick like a typical frosting. Use a knife or and off set spatula to cover the sides first (some of it will drip down) then cover the top with the remaining glaze. The glaze will remin soft - it will not harden and become stiff, but it will set up.

Notes:

• Try to use good cocoa - actually, Hershey's Special Dark is pretty good and not as expensive as the others.
• Same goes for the chocolate in the frosting - the better the chocolate, the better it tastes.
• If you are not a purist when it comes to your chocolate cake, you could brush the cake with some seedless raspberry preserves before glazing it.

Don't forget to head back to the Dessert Carnival to check out the rest of the festivities (click on the picture).

Update

Thank you all for your well wishes, prayers and thoughts for Hank - they worked! Thankfully he is home now. He is still on oxygen, but doing well. You can read the details and more about their journey at Katie's blog, but bring your tissue.

On a lighter note (not pound wise, just mood), Cielo over at The House in Roses is hosting a Dessert Carnival tomorrow and I submitted an easy chocolate cake recipe - you can find it here tomorrow. Check out her site tomorrow for more and fire up your printer because she promises lots of great recipes.

It Finally Happened

After a month of wiggling and jiggling a tooth that I suspect was not really loose to begin with, Spencer finally got it out. At 6 1/2, this is the first and boy has he been waiting (not so patiently) for this date. Being one of the youngest kids in the class, it has been hard for him to sit back and watch while the other children are getting visits from that little fairy right and left. I suspect that is why he has been wiggling that poor little tooth so hard and eating apples like there is no tomorrow. It is out now and, of course, the tooth fairy paid him a visit. What I did not anticipate was Spencer updating us at 3 o'clock in the morning... I must have missed that footnote in the parent manual. I am sure there is more fine print I have missed from that book, but for now we will just focus on getting used to this new smile!

Do Whatever You Do

Hope, pray, cross your fingers, light a candle, whatever you do, please do a little extra for our new little nephew Hank. He was born last Friday and is every bit as cute as he should be, but not as healthy. Today is his mom's birthday and I can't think of a better present than this little guy making progress on his road to recovery. So, please do whatever you do - send up a prayer, or just think good thoughts - for Hank, Katie and the rest of their family.

Let The Battle Begin

In our family, we like animals - all kinds really. I grew up with horses, a pony, geese, dogs, cats, parrots, we had an escape artist of a hamster once, but apparently he died of "old age" when I was visiting my father, but that's a whole other story. Sam and I, however, are a lot less daring than my mother and we are pretty much cat people when it comes to the animal kingdom coming in doors. We will feed just about anything that comes to our door, but for most animals, that is as far as it goes. We love feeding the birds, squirrels and chipmunks. In fact, our squirrels are so well fed that when they were jumping onto the bird feeders they were pulling them down - or so we thought.

We know there are other critters out there like skunks and raccoons - we know this because we have had encounters with both. I had a run in with a skunk one day in the backyard. The kids and I ran like wind into the house and hid and Spencer had bad skunk dreams for a month after. One afternoon I head something outside, I looked out to find Sam running out of the garage, as he said, "squealing like a little girl". He took a raccoon by surprise (we had left the door open), but it turned out he was the one surprised.

The other morning Sam woke up at 4:30 AM to do some reading in preparation for a meeting he had that day. As he was reading, he was startled to catch something out of the corner of his eye moving about the deck. He looked up to see something looming out of the window - it was a raccoon climbing the pole of the bird feeder (sorry squirrels for the false accusations). When he didn't find anything interesting, he moved on to the garbage can we use to store the bird and squirrel food.

Now, in theory, raccoons are really cool animals and for a brief moment we thought of setting out food for him, but he quickly became unwelcome when he pooped on the railing of the deck, right next to the corn we feed the squirrels. As the Owen would say, "sisgusting"! These guys have got to go - little kids and wild animal poop do not mix. So, let the battle begin. Sam vs. the raccoon. So far, it's not looking good at 0 - 2 and, I'm not sure, but I think he is gloating.

The Make-Over

She is back from her sprucing (an extensive make-over and a little body work, but it is probably not polite to discuss it in public):

Before:

After:

All she needs is a bit of make-up (some new pillows) and a proper backdrop (new curtains) and she'll be all set.

Pulling Out My Hair

No, it is not because the children have yet another week off from school. So far so good. The change in weather makes all the difference. Yesterday, Greenie, the kids, and I headed to the zoo. It was a perfect day, not too hot, not too cold - we all know it isn't going to last so we are enjoying it while it is around. The kids had a great time (although it always amazes me when we do things like an outing at the zoo and the kids are more interested in the pair of ducks who have taken over a fountain, or the light fixtures that light the paths). But that's not why I am pulling out my hair either.

With the new spring light, I have discovered a bunch of gray hairs. Now, I know many of you are thinking: so what that is just part of the aging process. True and I can go along with some of the other delightful things that happen, but gray hair? No way! I'm just not ready. I am a red head and have been for the last 32 years and it really is part of my identity. So, when I see those suckers I pull 'em out. It used to be that I would see one or two, but now they seem to be multiplying - quickly. My hair dresser said it is okay to pull them out and that it isn't true that more come when you pull them out. He said it just seems that way because you make them all the same length. If these things don't slow down soon I am not going to be worrying about the length because I going to be bald, but just in the front and on the sides because I can't see the ones in the back.

Plus, I am guessing that with the rainy days ahead and all three children home I might be back to pulling my hair out anyway, red or gray. Either way, I think I might have a new identity before the spring break is over - the strange looking red head woman who is bald except for the patch of graying red hair in the back. Oh well.

Hope you all are having a good week and you too are getting some spring light (but not too much because it is very revealing) - some finished knitting projects, Sam's second run in with a raccoon, and pictures of the reupholstered sofa coming soon...

American Idol and French Bread

What do they have to do with one another? Nothing really, it's just that every time I think about writing this Randy Jackson's voice pops into my head saying "yo dawg check it out". Scary isn't it? First, I'm not a "yo dawg" kinda person. Second, I am not a huge American Idol fan, in fact, this season is the first I have ever watched and had the writers not been on strike I may not have ever seen the show. I know it is really popular, but it just didn't appeal to me. Maybe it's because I have never been an aspiring singer - really, I could make dogs howl with my terrible voice, I have no rhythm (have you seen Elaine dance on Seinfeld?) and finally, I can't remember the words to songs and I am forever singing the one verse I remember at the wrong time. Anyway, I'm watching now, so check this out dawg:

I have been making bread and not the sandwich kind - I mean the good the crusty French kind. I had been looking at Mark Bittman's no-knead bread recipe for quite some time, but never took the plunge. Just in case you are not familiar with the recipe, you mix the ingredients and let them sit and eventually bake the bread in a cast iron/Le Creuset kind of pot. I showed my mom, the artisan bread baking aficionado, the recipe and she thought about it for a while too and decided to go for it. She researched a bit more and found the Artisan Bread In Five Minutes A Day book. She started making the Master recipe and used the Bittman cooking method and it was perfect. I was still a bit hesitant because I did not want my very nice Le Creuset pot that was given to me by my in-laws for my 30th birthday to look like this (it's my mom's):

So, when I found a knock-off at Marshall's on Clearance for $29 (regularly $89), I dove into bread baking.

You probably aren't going to believe me, but it is really easy! Here is what you need:

You need a big plastic container to mix up the dough
Flour
Yeast
Kosher Salt
Water
This recipe
A cast iron pot with a lid, or a baking dish for water and a baking stone
Parchment Paper
Corn Meal

Here is the gist of the recipe: mix together the ingredients, let stand on the counter for 3 hours, refrigerate until ready to use. You will have enough mixed up in the bin to make a total of 4 loaves and the dough will keep in the refrigerator for 14 days.

If you opt to use the pot and lid method (much easier) disregard 6-9 in the above recipe and do this: when ready to bake a round, take out a grapefruit sized piece, put it in a skillet that has a piece parchment sprinkled with cornmeal inside, let rise 45 minutes, flour and slash top as described in recipe, place in pot that has been heating in the oven at 450 degrees for 20 minutes. Bake in pot for 20 minutes, when light brown take out of pot and bake just on the rack for another 10 or 15 minutes or until desired brownness. Let cool on wire rack and try not to eat the whole thing.

It is super cool dawg.

In His Defense

A few weeks ago, while Sam and I were giving Laney a bath she, in her usual opinionated manner, made it very clear that there was only one way to rinse her hair...

Me: Can you believe that someone so small can have so many opinions? I mean, she is just 2. She is such a force. Have you ever seen anything like it?

Sam: Yeah, I'm just used to dealing with the 32 year old version.

For Sam's sake, it is really is best that there are only two of us.

Design Flaw

Now that we have officially been married 8 years, I feel secure enough in my marriage that I can post this little marital dispute. Let me start by saying that I have been in a pregnancy induced nesting fury. There has been a lot of deep cleaning and Sam has been indulging me with his help in these cleans. Actually, truth be told, I start it, poop out and he finishes. Anyway, this weekend, during my pooped out period post basement purge, I retired to the couch to watch Becoming Jane. It was during this period of time that "the incident" occurred. After watching the movie, I got up to work on dinner. At this point, the details become a bit fuzzy. All I can remember is I needed to put something into the pine armoire in the living room. I walked in and, to my horror, this is what I saw:

Yes, that is a latch that Sam made by drilling a hole in the front of the cupboard.

Can't see it very well - let me take you a little closer:

Let me take you just a bit closer so you can fully appreciate the detail:

This lovely little thing was a project he and Laney worked on together - I guess the 4 year old and 6 year old had better sense, so he enlisted the help of the 2 year old. I think in a way I am partly to blame for this because I should have suspected something was wrong when I overheard him say to Laney, "we have to find the drill bit". I guess it never crossed my mind that he would be drilling into furniture. The exchange after this was rather strange because he was so proud of his "solution" and I was simply stunned - similar to the reaction I had after the powdered sugar incident and finding this little sketch in the kitchen.

This, however, was done a 4 year old, still not cool, but at least he is not 32. Anyway, Sam thought the latch was a "good idea" and unlike the 4 year old he had much better answers for his actions. Here is a bit of our exchange:

When I asked him why he did it he said it was to help me.
When I questioned him as to why he would drill into a piece of furniture without even mentioning his intentions he said he wanted to surprise me.
When I told him it was hideous he said he was surprised I would say that because he used matching wood and thought it would go with the rustic style of the cabinet.
When I reminded him that the majority of the puzzles and games were kept in the drawers below and all he had really done was lock them out of their hardback books he said he did it for safety.
When I pointed out the obvious, you know the hole that he had made in the front of the armoire, he said I wouldn't even notice with a little bit of wood putty.

He was pretty quick firing back all of those answers, but I had one complaint left:

When I told him that one had to hold the latch up with one hand and pinch a finger on the other to get the door closed (it only swivels one way due to the molding on the door) he did not have an answer - a major design flaw.

I see a cute little French armoire in my future, after all, this one now has a design flaw.

No Foolin'

Today Sam and I have been married 8 years. Yes, I know it is April Fools Day, but it really was the day we were married - no foolin'. The thing was, we had known each other a long time (I was 17 when we first met) and we didn't want to wait any longer to get married, so he proposed December 24, 1999 and we were married April 1, 2000. April 1st was one of the few dates the church was available (can't imagine why) and it worked with every one's schedule, so that was the date. The crazy date aside, oh, and the air horn used to summon volunteer firefighters that sounded during our church ceremony, we had a great celebration. It was a small wedding by today's standards, about 90 people, and, with the exception of the ugliest wedding cake ever, I wouldn't have changed a thing. I remember while heading off to our honeymoon, Sam and I tried to figure out how we could recreate the day because it was so wonderful. Little did we know the days would only get better. I don't think it ever would have occurred to us that 8 years later, at 32, we would have 3 children, 1 on the way, and be living in Michigan in our little old house. But, here we are and today the only joke is the number of wrinkles we have accumulated in the last 8 years.

I always enjoy seeing other people's wedding photos, so I thought I would share a few of ours.

The pretty old Episcopal church in St. Helena, Ca.

This is Father Mac and we are literally tying the knot. I think the air horn sounded sometime just after this. I look at this picture and all I can think about is having a waist again!

Here is a decent picture of the dress that my mom, grandmother, mother-in-law and I found at the end of a long day of shopping in down town San Francisco.

The reception was held outside on a patio in a rose garden at my mom's house (a.k.a. Greenie) in Calistoga.

My mom/Greenie.

Her house.

The view.

The patio (Laney now looks at that nude statue and says "she needs a diaper").

A few glasses of champagne later.

Finally, a picture of the ugliest wedding cake ever. I gave the woman a picture of a gorgeous fondant covered cake with butter cream roses I had saved for years from Victoria magazine. Imagine my surprise when this was sitting on the cake table. I told you it was ugly!

Our April Fools was really a great day with no jokes (other than the cake), but lots of great memories - no foolin'.