The Minnesota Farm Woman

My mother told me the story of the “Never Fail Chocolate Cake” when she called me to tell me that I had messed up her recipe. At age 86, she has made that cake about 572 times and knows the recipe by heart. Her almost-54-year-old daughter? Not so sharp. I checked back to see just where the mistake was made and saw that it was more than a year ago, on themnfarmwoman.com website, which was what I used for last week’s column, published in the paper and on Facebook. I mistakenly wrote  1 1/2 cups of flour instead of 2 1/2 cups.  Horrified, I quickly sent out Facebook notifications, but that of course doesn’t help any readers who clip out a cake recipe and plan it for Sunday dinner. My apologies to you. I started wondering, though. I know that my cake recipe has had about 200 “hits” on the web site in the last year. Surely SOMEONE made the “Never Fail Chocolate Cake” with the error, but one would certainly expect some hate mail from disgruntled readers whose never-fail cakes failed miserably.  I did get a few surprising replies when I sent out the announcements: “This cake is delicious just the way it is!” and “It turned out fine.” Hmmm…..strange. My Cake Whisperer mother  said that the batter would be too thin and it couldn’t possibly work. A reader wrote and told me that it would just be a lighter cake. I decided to do a little experimenting and try it myself, using only 1 1/2 cups of flour. I informed my husband that we would have to eat yet another home-made chocolate cake with fudge frosting this weekend.  It’s hard to be married to me sometimes, but somebody’s got to do it.  The cake batter was thin, as I expected. The cake rose well, and took about 25 minutes to bake. As the cake cooled, it fell a little. I was a little nervous, but made that delicious frosting that would make an old tennis shoe taste good, spread it on, and tasted. It was good. It was better than good.  I noticed that the other taste tester ate two pieces. The cake is flatter and denser,  kind of like moist cake-style brownies.  In the interest of making this a true scientific experiment, I ate a piece for breakfast this morning. It was important to make sure it tasted good cold as well as warm, and it did.   It does contain eggs and flour, just like waffles do,  so technically could be considered breakfast food.  Scientific minds like mine figure these things out.   The results of the experiment are as follows:  1) If you want the true “Never Fail Chocolate Cake”, use 2 1/2 cups of flour in the recipe.  2) If you like a moist, gooey “chocolate overboard” type cake you can use 1 1/2 cups of flour, bake for a shorter amount of time, and make the “Farm Woman Mistake Cake”.  3) If you eat this cake two weeks in a row your jeans will begin to feel too tight.  Now for the story behind the cake:   My dad was attending a conference at a resort and brought along his wife and beautiful baby girl. (That’s me.)  While Dad was in class, Mom visited in the kitchen with the owner’s wife, talking about food and looking through her recipes.  She thought this cake sounded good. She was right, and family history was made. She remembers that the resort was somewhere in Minnesota and had no indoor plumbing.  Of course she would remember an outhouse because she had a baby wearing cloth diapers and a husband who was in class all day.  She thought it was probably about 60 years ago, though. Sixty? This from a woman who can remember a long-ago outhouse and can spot a recipe misprint a mile away?  Thanks, Mom for recipes and advice and shoes and for giving birth to a beautiful baby girl 54 (Not even CLOSE to 60) years ago this week. I should send you flowers, but I know you don’t particularly care for them.  How about a piece of cake instead?