Small Things and the Ultimate Chocolate Cake

In case I ever doubted that small things could add up to become something a little more substantial, my father has forever eliminated that doubt. My dad used to be in the army and I’m assuming that’s how he got a hold of the cardboard tube thingy that apparently used to house a massive-ass artillery casing. What does it house now? Change.

I’m not being philosophical. It houses change as in money, coins. When he gets home at the end of the day, he empties his pockets and drops all his change into the tube-thingy. When the New Year comes around, he dumps the whole tube out, rolls all the coins it, counts it up and brings it to the bank.

How much change did he accumulate in one year? A mere 1159$. I have no idea how he does it. I also have a change jar, but it never gets even remotely close to that high.

I pity the people at the bank. I swear they must cringe when they see my dad coming in with a plastic bag.

Aside from that, I mentioned this yesterday, I think I have found the ultimate chocolate cake. I wanted to make something for my professor, the unnamed one, as a thank you. She said she liked chocolate and that’s where I began my search. I finally came across a recipe requiring about 21 ounces of chocolate for a single cake. It’s pretty chocolaty and somewhat like a brownie. The cake itself has 8 ounces of melted chocolate and another eight of cocoa powder. The glaze has 5 ounces of melted chocolate. But that’s not all! There’s also about a third of a cup of brandy in it!

Because I never give people food without trying it first and I’d never made this recipe before, I decided to do a trial run. I picked up the wrong kind of chocolate but thankfully, apparently semisweet and bittersweet chocolate can be pretty close to the same thing. If the batter had been too bitter, I only would have had to add sugar. Luckily, it was fine and I didn’t have to adjust anything. At last, the batter was done. I lined my pan with wax paper, greased it and then found out the damn pan was too small. The importance of reading baking instructions... I dug out a bigger pan, lined it, greased it and dumped the batter in. Problem? The wax paper from before was clinging to the batter. I was covered in chocolate by the time I got the paper out and added the rest of the batter. I put the damn thing in the oven where it stayed for about five minutes until I realized that the pan had to be in another pan filled with water. So after all of that, I had to refrigerate the damn thing for six hours wrapped in paper... Lotsa work, but it’s really, really good. Yay for test runs!

Now I have to do it again.

Lauren.