Deep Dark Chocolate Cake

For New Year's this year, we had our friends Leslie & Jonathan over. For the past few months we've been doing these things Leslie dubbed 'Recession Dinners' with them and a couple of other friends in which we attempt to be social despite having no money by having each other over for food and excessive drinking. Whether or not said food is supposed to be budget conscious I don't really know. It can't hurt. Mostly, it's just more about it being cheaper to party @ home than to party elsewhere--with the added benefit of us living around the corner from Leslie & JB, which facilitates the ease of stumbling home.

Leslie and I cooked up the idea of a Recession Dinner for NYE, and immediately decided this was wonderful. What's more, my dad has a client who gives him a gift certificate to Legal Seafoods (lobster dinner for those of you non-New Englanders) each year, and my dad has decided it is fun to give it to me. So for the past couple of years we have had the chance to have friends over so I can laugh at them while they have no idea how to eat their lobster.

Obviously this would be perfect for New Year's Eve. We would front the food (you can't get more recession-friendly than free thanks to a gift certificate) and Leslie and JB would bring the drinks. Unfortunately, I realized there was no dessert included in the lobster dinner, so I dug around. There are only a couple of Recipe Book desserts left, and one involves a lot of specialty store shopping. Which I tried, but was quickly thwarted on, what with places being closed and all that for the holiday.

Luckily, I found Cassie and Judd's recipe for Deep Dark Chocolate Cake hiding away in the cookies section, nearly lost to all time. And what with it being chocolate cake, I was pretty sure I had all the ingredients in the house. Well, except for milk. We were almost out of regular milk, although that carton of Lactaid from Josh's parents' visit was still here. Can you cook with Lactaid? And cocoa powder. Wow, how did that happen? I had used an entire tin of cocoa powder in the past couple of months? I never even owned that stuff before.

Well, I had most of it anyway, so I scraped together what I had and asked Josh to make a grocery run for the items I'd be stretched especially thin on. I threw the cake together (old hat, I tell you) and had it cooling by the time Leslie and Jonathan came over for the festivities. After dinner, the boys retired to the basement to while away the final hour of 2009 playing Beatles Rock Band, while Leslie and I cleaned up the kitchen and frosted the cake, which we then ate with our champagne after midnight.

At this point, several things must be said:

1. I did not screw up this cake. This may be a world record. I didn't mix it badly. I didn't overbake it. I didn't set it on fire or drown it. I didn't break it coming out the molds. I didn't frost it before it was cooled. The frosting even looked good. A New Year's miracle.

2. This cake was good. DAMN good. This is what Josh looks like when you give him this cake:

Okay, maybe having lots of champagne and
an Olie dog-pillow helps, but still.

It is so moist, moist with the moistness for which I have been searching in all the other from-scratch baking I have done. Moist with a moistness that makes me say moist so often it provokes dirty commentary.

Seriously, I don't even much like chocolate cake, but this shit was good. I have since force-fed what was left of it to anyone who has so much as looked at my house, so that Josh and I didn't die in a giant gluttonous pile of chocolate cake. He still managed to eat two slices of it for dinner last night, though. Delicious.

3. I am good at Rock Band drums. I just thought you should know.

Happy New Year!

Cassie & Judd's Uber-Moist, Super Delicious, Deep, Dark Chocolate Cake

2 cups sugar (1 cup regular and 1 cup raw because you ran out of regular)
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder (almost. maybe more like 2/3s. it's getting scant around here.)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (kosher!)
2 eggs
1 cup milk (topped off with Lactaid because you ran out of regular. you CAN cook with Lactaid.)
1/2 cup vegetable oil (canola)
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup boiling water**

Oven to 350 degrees. Flour two 9" pans or one 13x9". Do a dance of joy because you now have two pans that are the same size/shape so you can do option A. Not only that, but they're springform, so they will be deeeeelightful come pan emptying time.

Stir together dry ingredients in a bowl, shaking out every last drop of the cocoa powder, which you have miraculously have run through in the past couple of months. Insane.

Add eggs (and healthy dose of shell, natch) through vanilla and beat on medium with an electric mixer for two minutes. Stir in boiling water. Note to self, measuring the boiling water in the metal measuring cup while it is seated in your palm is probably not the best idea you have ever had. Ouch.

Cassie says: Batter will be thin.

I say: You're not kidding, lady. This looks like chocolate juice.

Bake 30-35 (for round) or 35-40 minutes (for rectangle) or until done, which it is after 30 in case you were wondering. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pan. Yay springform easy to remove cake-ness! Cool completely before frosting. I think several hours and drinks later counts as cool completely, don't you?

Frosting: Wait until Josh returns from the grocery with the replacement items, then realize you put the mixing bowl and beater attachment into the now-running dish washer. Cede frosting-making responsibilities to Josh when he claims he can beat it himself without the electric mixer. Be my guest.

Give Josh 6 tbsp of butter in bowl to beat. Melt it in the microwave a little for him because you aren't totally evil. Add 2 2/3 cups powdered sugar (that's a LOT of powdered sugar!) and 1/2 cup cocoa powder (new tin, obviously) alternately with 4-6 tbsp of milk. Or forget the alternately part and just dump in all the milk after you dump in all the powder. Have Josh dance around proudly after he beats it to spreading consistency and stir in vanilla. Wonder, Um, How much vanilla? Have Josh say, "A dash," and comply.

Eat delicious seafood dinner with lots of wine. Enlist Leslie's help to spread all the frosting. Then do the fancy finishing touches with the white piping and confetti sprinkles, thus stealing all the glory, while pointing out in your blog that all that went right with the frosting is actually attributable to Josh and Leslie.

Happy New Year!

**Is this what makes it moist?! Oh so moist!!