Chocolate-Covered Freakin' Habit Forming

I rarely spend my Sundays resting. I mean, I sleep in a bit, and sometimes I wear my pyjamas all day, but I usually have a pretty full schedule. Since I'm not teaching this quarter, most of my business has been cooking- or pleasure-reading-related. This Sunday I finished reading a wonderfully fun book by Jasper Fforde, _The Eyre Affair_. It was wry and smart and a pretty good mystery to boot. I've read so many books that reference _Jane Eyre_ I'm starting to think if won't matter if I never actually read it. I am eager to start the next few books in Fforde's "Thursday Next" series.

Also this Sunday I decided I wanted to bake a cake. I had a lot of strawberries (Sam's Club is a dangerous place), a hankering for something chocolate-y, and a new soy whipped cream product to try. In my mind I envisioned a chocolate layer cake with cream and strawberries in the middle and a chocolate glaze/frosting on top. This vision was partly inspired by a recipe and picture from a cookbook called _Vegan_ (a snooty sort of cookbook - it calls canola oil "rapeseed oil" Ooh la la). Since my version would be far less snobbish, it shouldn't be too hard, right?

Well, right for the most part. I used a chocolate cake recipe from the _Vegan Handbook_ since I had tried their vanilla cake before with some success. _Vegan Handbook_ is another semi-dated cookbook/reference that was one of my first veg tools. It alternates recipes (organized by ingredient, as well a country [Ethiopia, Ireland, Spain] and holiday [Halloween, Easter]) with articles about vegetarian nutrition, alternatives to leather clothes etc. Though the advice can be a bit new-agey, and some of the recipes aren't truly vegan (Guiness technically uses isinglass, a fish by-product, to filter their beer), it's cookbook heart is in the right place. My only complaint with the chocolate cake recipe (pretty standard except for the lack of eggs) is the order in which it tells me to mix the ingredients. I should have creamed the butter with the sugar first. It would have made mixing easier since I don't have my stand mixer at the apartment with me, just a hand mixer.

Other than that the cakes baked nicely. No burning! (Thanks mostly to the nice shiny, silver Wilton pans my mom gave me for Valentine's Day) And now the apartment smelled most excellently of chocolate cake. It was time to make the filling and topping.

On a recent trip to Columbus, I stopped at Whole Foods, which, for all it's snobbishness, is really the only place I can consistently find the vegan convenience foods and random ingredients I sometimes need for my cooking. On this particular visit, though I wasn't looking for it, I found Soyatoo non-dairy whipping cream, which, according to the picture on the box, as well as some product reviews I had read, was supposed to whip up just like the real thing. So into the bowl I poured the box and began whipping....and whipping.....

....and whipping.

...and whipping.

The back of the box told me to "whip at the highest speed for 3 minutes or until it reaches my desired consistancy." I must have been standing there for ten minutes. I ate my lunch one-handed. I whipped that stuff until I could feel the mixer vibrating in my shoulder. And while it did thicken up a bit, it never got fluffy or peak-y like the box picture. It looked and tasted a bit like Cool-Whip left out on the counter. Not bad, neccesarily, but not what I was expecting. But was I daunted? Hells to the no.

While my cakes cooled and my not-quite-thick-enough whipped topping chilled in the fridge, I began to make my chocolate sauce/frosting. Here's where things got exciting. They always do when melty chocolate is involved. Here is the first step given in the cookbook (full recipe after the story):

"Break the chocolate into pieces and melt in a bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Do not let the bowl touch the water."

Do not let the bowl touch the water? What? So I am supposed to hold a bowl in my hands over boiling water while it gets hotter and hotter? I feel like this step might have been better served by the addition of the line "pull out your double-boiler." Fat lot of help that would have been, though, considering I don't have a double-boiler.

What I did have was a small sauce pan and a bigger sauce pan. And let me tell you, I am getting proficient - damn proficient - at cooking one-handed. I got my leftover Lindt (70%) chocolate (a Valentine's gift from Kev) and had my agave and soymilk ready on the counter. I had a spatula in my mouth. The chocolate is melting, I am stirring, stirring, stirring. Once the chocolate is melted (and I'll be honest, at that point I was feeling pretty self-righteous about the success of my jerry-rigged double-boiler...like how I imagine MacGuyver might've felt), I pour in the agave and stir stir stir and use the spatula I was storing in my mouth with my two free fingers. So far so good. The recipe then calls to slowly add 3/4 cup of milk. So I do. Add some. Stir stir stir. Add some. Stir stir stir. It smells good, it looks good, I'm not burning it (as I often do when I try and help my mom make candy at Christmas). I take that moment to say, outloud, to my empty kitchen, "Man, I am awesome! I am making chocolate!"

Ah, but pride cometh before the wreck of desserts (as well as the fall). The next little bit of soy milk I added was obviously too much because the chocolate stubbornly refused to re-thicken and be sauce. Instead it became hot chocolate. Really, really expensive hot chocolate. I put the remaining half-cup of milk in the pot, warmed it up and poured it into a mug. (My roomate came home shortly thereafter, drank it down in three big gulps, and told me I could make 5 dollar cups of hot chocolate any time I felt like it.) Before that though, I felt like a lot of a failure. Then I remembered I had some more chocolate, this time a big ole brick of Scharffen Berger 70%. I had to score it with a carving knife and then hit it with my rolling pin to break it. Hitting stuff with a big stick definitely helps with feelings of failure in the kitchen.

This time around I used the following recipe:

4-5 ounces of good dark chocolate, melted in a double-boiler (or, if you're cool, two pots and some dexterous fingers)

when the chocolate is melted add 2 scant tablespoons of agave and stir until well mixed.

Add about a quarter cup of soy milk, one teaspoon or tablespoon at a time, mixing it very well until it reaches your desired consistency. (The original recipe also calls for a tablespoon or so of Kirsch or Cointreau. I would probably use less soymilk if you choose to add liquour.)

And voila! Success! A very nice chocolate sauce. 

After chopping up about a pound of strawberries it was time to put my cake

 together. The cream didn't get any thicker in the fridge but I used it anyway. I spread about half a cup on the first layer and then a layer of strawberries. I put another quarter- or half-cup of cream on top of that and then, with my big-handed roommate's assistance (he eagerly helps when there are chocolately knives and spoons to lick), flipped the other cake on top. I then spread on my chocolate topping, added a few strawberry slices and...

Huzzah! Cake! And might I say, this was one tasty dessert. The mooshy sweetness of the strawberries and cream middle was well balanced by the dark shell of chocolate on top. Next time I would definitely put more cream in the center. Because it was so thin, it soaked in a bit. Still delicious, but we ended up putting more cream on top of the individual slices. Maybe even more strawberries. 

In any event, my "Breaking Even Chocolate Strawberry Cake" (named as such because of my 3:3 success to failure ratio this time around) is already half gone.