Aunt Marcella's Chocolate Cake

 This past weekend we again celebrated Mike's and my birthdays.  We meet in a city half way between our son and us so we all do the drive.  It works great, the weather cooperated and by the time we left all of the grands were completely convinced I'm a crazy old lady.  But we had fun getting to that point.

The central point to a birthday is the cake.  You must have a cake on your birthday, I don't care how old you get.  We had two.  Mine is always a cake I love from a bakery here and it's a major splurge.  

Mike asked for Aunt Marcella's chocolate cake. And therein lies the problem.  

PH's Aunt Marcella lived to be 95 and has been gone a good long time. Such stories we have about her! Our son first tasted her cake when he was maybe 4 or 5 years old, so that's 40 years ago.  He flipped for it so I asked for the recipe.  

Step one was to mix cocoa, water and salt over a flame till it was "thick thin."  I knew I was in trouble.  But my son hit it on the head when he said we can ask someone for a recipe but it's the technique that we need.  And he is absolutley right.  If I give someone a recipe the page is overflowing with comments on how I do it.  "This is what it says, but this is what I DO."

Aunt Marcella's cake is great and has always turns out like a charm. It's the frosting that's possessed. In the 40 years I've been trying, I can't think of more than once, maybe twice that it turned out. It's a frosting you pour on, not spread.  And it is impossible!  

More times than not it congeals into a solid lump of fudge.  I dare you to sharpen your best knife and cut it.   

This year daughter was probably tired of listening to me going on in angst over having to make this frosting for this cake because Mike asked for it.  You ALWAYS do what the grands ask, don't you? I do.

So daughter said she would try the frosting and I make the cake.  Deal.

She made the frosting a week before and put it in the refrigerator.  Of course it fudged. I microwaved it to break it down again.  That worked but when I put it on that cake it immediately turned into asphalt patch. See above photo.

So, I was down to making the second cake of the day and doing the frosting myself and trying to meditate myself into being calm.

Over the years I've tried tricking everyone by making some other chocolate frosting.  A ganache, I even resorted to using a boxed frosting mix I don't think they even make anymore. I tried everything but my son has that food memory of HER frosting on THIS cake and he's passed that myth on to his kids.

Well, I tried a new technique.  After cooking it for the required seven minutes and then taking it off the heat and stirring for 15-20 minutes (yes, that's right) I decided maybe I'd use the hand mixer and beat it occasionally during that cooling time.  That seemed to work ok.  It thickened just enough, it didn't turn into fudge.  I poured it over the cake and it didn't run down the side of the counter and onto the floor.  It seemed to act like a slightly loose ganache that stayed in place.  

In the meantime, I put a bottle of sprinkles on the table and told PH he had to pick all of the blue balls out and put them on a plate.  It was a big football weekend for us and Detroit Lions' colors are blue and silver and if this frosting worked this time I would need a nap, not cake decorations.  

Well, you can see what happened when I lifted the cake on the plate after the frosting cooled.  Everything stayed intact but it wrinkled so it looks like my neck.   But it was delicious.  Does all of this deserve it's own blog post?  Probably not but sometimes you need to get something off your chest.

I also told the kids in no uncertain terms will I make their wedding cakes with Aunt Marcella's frosting. 

And when I die I will have her recipe in my hand and when I see her I will insist she tell me her techniques.  

I needed a bottle of this.  I haven't had red wine for two years but I needed this!  And it tasted so good and because everyone else was drinking beer I didn't have to share!