Devil’s Food Chocolate Cake

I love Devil’s Food Chocolate Cake.  What’s not to love about it?  After all, it is chocolate!

Usually, when the craving hits me, I pull out a Betty Crocker’s Devil’s Food Chocolate Cake, beat in eggs and water, and 30-40 minutes later, I have a cake.

But, in my desire to practice baking & cooking skills, yesterday I decided to make the cake from scratch.

I used a recipe from a cookbook I received at my wedding shower, The American Test Kitchen. 

It came out pretty good, my only complaint being that I found it left a cocoa aftertaste.  The boys said the cake was delicious, and although they could taste the cocoa, it wasn’t a bad thing, so we’ll see.  Maybe next time I’ll tweak it to use a little less cocoa powder? 

At least I tried.. :)

Here’s the recipe I used:

Devil’s Food Cake:
1 1/2 cup – all-purpose flour
1 tsp – baking soda
1/2 tsp – baking powder
1/4 tsp – salt
1 1/4 cup – boiling water
4 oz – unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup – Dutch processed Cocoa powder
10 tablespoons – butter, softened
1 1/2 cup – lightly packed brown sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup – sour cream
1 tsp – vanilla extract

1. Grease three 8-inch cake pans (or in my case two 9-inch pans) and line the bottoms with parchment paper.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.  In a separate bowl, whisk boiling water, chocolate, and cocoa powder until smooth.

3. In an electric mixer, beat on medium speed butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, 3 to 6 minutes.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated, scraping the bowl and beaters as needed.  Beat in sour cream and vanilla.

4. On low, beat in 1/3 of the flour mixture.  Beat in half of the chocolate mixture.  Repeat with half of the remaining flour mixture, then the remaining chocolate mixture, and finally the last third of the flour mixture.

5. Give the batter one final stir using a rubber spatula.  Divide batter evenly between cake pans.  Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean except for a few crumbs.

6. Let cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes on a wire rack.  Flip onto wire rack, remove parchment paper, and flip cakes upright.  Let cool completely before frosting, 1 to 2 hours.

Re-thinking the ‘perfect housewife’

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When I first started The Undomestic Housewife (exactly a year ago yesterday!), I was on a journey to become domesticated.

Earlier this week though, I was reading D @ Unpolished Parenting’s post, Not Your Typical Housewife, and she got me thinking, what does being a ‘perfect’ or ‘domestic’ housewife mean to me?

I’ve made no secret my plan to become the perfect housewife.  Besides it being a completely unrealistic goal, I don’t think I really mean it, at least not in the traditional sense.  I don’t want to be the 50’s housewife that stays at home all day to clean and cook and turn out a perfectly cooked gourmet dinner every night at 5:30 p.m. on the dot, while making sure I look wonderful for the husband who is returning from work.  I expect my husband to help out, and I’ve been pretty blessed with AMP as he is even more neat and tidy than I am, and does help out quite a bit (most of the time).

But, I just want to be able to do domestic things. 

I grew up with around a gaggle of perfect Italian housewives.  While there were times growing up where my mom worked outside the home, for the most part, she was a stay-at-home mom.  Our house was always clean and dinners always delicious.  My dad has always helped out around the house is some form or another, but my mom mostly took care of everything.  You’d think with such a perfect example to follow, I would have picked up some good skills…

My only saving grace is that I can clean.  Mom made sure of that.  That’s not to say I’m neat and tidy, but I can make the house look sparkling with the best of them… I just can’t seem to keep it looking that way for longer than a couple of hours. 

But, with cooking… That skill is lost on me. My dad has always been a picky eater, so I happily let mom worry about cooking, which now I realize was probably foolish.  Perhaps some practice when I was younger would have made me more confident in the kitchen now.

But, I’m not.  I have no confidence in the domestic skills area…

And, I know I’m always full of new ‘goals’ and resolutions, but I’m thinking that I need to rearrange my priorities…

Right now all I think about is babies…And well, that’s not getting me anywhere.  If I’m going to be a mom someday, I want to learn to be a little more domestic – I want to be the mom who teaches her daughter to make lasagna from scratch, and the best way to clean the bathroom quickly, and how to sew on a button.  I want to be a stay-at-home mom like my mom – the kind of mom who made homemade healthy meals every night of the week…

So for my new challenge, to keep things interesting, I’m going to start scouring cookbooks for recipes, and start practicing.  I’m going to create a cleaning schedule and stick to it.  I’m going to slowly become more domesticated.  Not so I can be the one solely in charge of all things domestic (I know AMP will continue to do his share as always) but so I can finally have some confidence in that one area of my life.

This post inspired (in part) by prompt no 1 at Josie’s Writing Workshop.

A Step in the Right Direction

I’m making some progress on the ‘domesticated’ front.

This past weekend, I managed to have my home spotless on Friday before 9:30 a.m.  Then, kept it reasonably tidy all weekend, requiring only a 20 mins or so tidying up on Sunday before my parents came over for dinner.

Yes, I had my parents, and my brother and his fiance over!  And I cooked!  Mostly.  My mom was there to guide me, but I made the lasagna all by myself, and it turned out pretty good.  Plus, the house was clean, and for once, I wasn’t incredibly nervous with having my parents over for dinner.  And the next morning, I drove AMP to work, went the to gym, ate breakfast, and had the house back to almost pristine condition all before 9. 

Now, to branch out and invite other people…. I’m not that far yet, I don’t think.  The fear of cooking for others and entertaining is still pretty crippling.  But at least I’m making progress.

Mageirocophobia

I’m not fearful of spiders or the dark.  I’m not fearful of heights or death.  I’m not fearful of thunder and lightning or of flying.

But, I have mageirocophobia – the fear of cooking, in the form of cooking for other people.

The mere thought of cooking for other people pushes me into a fear-induced panic, which includes sweating, heart palpitations and shaking. 

I have absolutely no confidence in my culinary skills.  Perhaps it is because my culinary skills are non-existent. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I can cook.  I can even theoretically follow a recipe, but cooking isn’t a pleasurable experience for me.  Every meal I make, I worry about how it’s going to taste, how it’s going to look, how it’s going to fail. 

It took me at least 6 months to vanquish the fear of cooking for A.  It helps that he’s the most non-picky eater and wonderfully understanding of my phobia and seems to always compliment anything I make.  But, I still can’t seem to cook for other people without inducing a panic attack.

Perhaps, it’s also because my inadequacies are readily apparent when you have had dinner at any one of my relative’s homes.  They are almost all amazing cooks that can produce fragrant, delicious, visually appealing meals at the drop of a hat.  I could argue that they have more experience, are older…but then there’s my cousin J… She is the picture of the perfect housewife.  She can keep her house relatively spotless, even with her active 18 month old.  She makes dinners like roasts and stuffed chicken breasts on a regular basis, and everything looks and tastes wonderful, even when it’s a simple meal.

An example — I was over there recently and she asks me if I wanted a sandwich for lunch.  Now, if I was making a sandwich for somebody on a typical day when I’m not really prepared for company – it would be just whatever deli meats I have in the fridge, mayo, and a tomato if I actually had one, and that’s probably it.  Oh, and cheese.

Her sandwich:  Toasted bread with turkey breast and cheese, tomatoes, bacon, lettuce, mayo.  On the side of the plate, perfectly sliced celery sticks. 

Even if I had tried, I could not have made it look as nice as she did. 

I think my jealousy is apparent.

I am constantly trying to conquer my fear.  When I know I will have family for the weekend or someone coming over, I always start with the full intention of cooking a meal.  I think of something simple that I’ve made hundreds of times and hardly ever mess up, and I decide that this is the time when my fear will be conquered.

And, every time, we end up ordering in or going out for dinner because the fear consumes me. 

Perhaps a cooking class is something I need to take to boost (or in my case, create) the confidence I need to tackle this ridiculous fear.

the undomestic housewife