Chocolate Pound Cake

As you know, from my post about my Southern sojourn, I returned with Cruze Buttermilk. I had one thing on my mind -- pound cake. The very first thing I remember being cooked for me in the old wood cheese box was chocolate poundcake.

Six years ago, the New York Times published Cheri Cruze's recipe for Buttermilk Poundcake.  My friend, Anne, used her baking box to make one.

One rainy afternoon, I found my mother's old recipe box and rooted around until I came across my old recipe. It was on a piece of crumbling paper, written in my big, loopy juvenile hand. One the back was the recipe for 7 Minute Frosting, the usual frosting my great aunts used on this cake.  It had been violently scratched out and replaced with a 4 Minute Chocolate Frosting.

I started out, convinced that I had everything I needed, until I reached for the sugar jar and found it empty.  I am not a big cookie maker.  All the cookies I make and therefore eat revolve around the chocolate chip/chunk/peanut butter combination.  Since most of those recipes call for a combination of white and brown sugar, I keep a jar of premixed sugar.  That saved the cake.

When I got ready for the ganache (in lieu of 4 Minute Chocolate Frosting) I realized there was no sweet milk. There was a can of evaporated milk leftover from Thanksgiving pie making.  I was a bit skimpy on the ganache.  I really like it to be a thick covering of chocolate and this batch was a little slim.

This recipe has a scant 1/2 cup of cocoa, so the cake is not overtly chocolate. Which is why I like a thick gaunach on the top!  But it is quite good. Pound cake, like fruit cake needs to be cooked low and slow. The nice thing about pound cake is that it will keep for quite some time if you store it in an air-tight cake tin. Here is the recipe.  Be sure to check you larder BEFORE you crack all the eggs to make sure you have everything you need.

While I cooked this in my Wood Cake Box, the low oven is recommend even if you use a a Bundt pan or angle food cake pan.  In a pan with a center hole, the cooking time will be about an hour and a half.  In the cake box, it can take fifteen to twenty minutes longer.

Chocolate Pound Cake

3 cups AP flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups sugar
2 sticks butter
5 eggs
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 300F.

In a medium bowl, sift the dry ingredients together.

In a large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until bright yellow, about 4 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating till incorporated after each addition. Add the vanilla.  Alternate the buttermilk and the dry ingredients in three batches, ending with the flour.

Bake for 1 hour 45 minutes.   You want the cake to puff up and the top to crack just a bit.  A toothpick inserted in the cake should come out clean.

I think it needed another 1/4 inch of ganache!  But it was exactly as I remember it -- sans billowy white meringue icing.

Happy Birthday Willy Wonka...

and Charlie and his chocolate factory.

The year marks the 50th anniversary of two of Roald Dahl's most endearing characters.  In the final analysis, Roald Dahl was perhaps the most enduring Roald Dahl character.  If one could step back and take a long look at the truly great children's authors, one might be quite shocked.  Frankly, they are not the kind of people one would actually leave children with.

I imagine that the very thing that makes children continually adore their work is a darkly violent undercurrent that is not always visible to the adult.  To be a truly great children's author one needs to retain the petulance of a child, a trait not greatly admired in the adult population.  Roald Dahl retained his childish petulance.  He was no paragon of virtue, but he innately understood the evil that lurks in the mind of a child.

He rarely let anyone in his writing hut, but once a year it was opened as children flocked to see the inner sanctum of Dahl's creativity.  A favorite object was his hip bone, removed during a hip replacement.  While adults seemed bewildered, children loved it.

This week, to mark the 50th anniversary of Willy and Charlie, 50 Irish bakers gathered and created cakes in honor of Dahl.   The Telegraph featured a large selection of these amazing cakes here. 

Famous Food Friday -- Colleen McCullough

People often joke that EVERYONE has a a book in them, well it is not a far stretch (especially if you read Famous Food Friday) to assume that EVERYONE has a cookbook in them. Today we are... Cooking With Colleen McCullough.

McCullough was a literary sensation in the late 1970's and 1980's after producing an rather large and rambling novel about Australia entitled: The Thorn Birds. It was ostensibly about a priest waging battle between his love of God and his love of all things female. It was all the rage and in 1983 it was turned into a rambling mini-series.


I came to write about this cookbook, not because of Colleen McCullough but because of Barbara Stanwyck .



Recently I saw an interview with the new "IT" girl, Brit Marling,


who said the actress she most wanted to be like was Barbara Stanwyck . A few days later, I saw Barbara Stanwyck in Annie Oakley.



Then, I was moving something in a desk and I ran across the Barbara Stanwyck Christmas Ornament, my BFF, Beverly gave me. Then I remembered The Thorn Birds, largely because of Barbara Stanwyck, who had a hot sex scene with a naked Richard Chamberlain. It was quite scandalous at the time. And that, my dear readers, is how we got to to Colleen McCullough's cookbook but, as always, I digress...



Colleen McCullough set out to be a doctor, but dermatitis kept her from scrubbing in as a physician, so she turned her interests to neurophysiology. While studying, she had a professor, Jean Easthope. The pair became friends and quickly began cooking together. They proved to be an unlikely, yet interesting mix. McCullough was raised in a meat-and-potatoes household while Easthope was raised by vegetarian parents.

The book is filled with archival prints, drawings and photographs, including a rather lovely kangaroo hunt (unless, of course, you are the kangaroo).


I was quite dismayed that the book failed to include a single kangaroo recipe. Since humans are a bit on the squeamish side and would rather eat pork than pig, venison than deer, so, an attempt was made recently to develop a "people" friendly culinary term for kangaroo. The winner is... "Australus." If you see"Australus" steak on the menu, you will no longer be in the dark.

Since we had no kangaroo, we immediately went to the chocolate. Even kangaroo, sorry, Australus, would be great if just smothered it in this lovely sauce.

Chocolate Rum Sauce

225 g (8 oz) dark chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons rum

Melt the chocolate and butter together in the top of a double boiler, stir well, and add the rum, stirring again.

As long as we are rambling...

The joy (as well as the curse) of our new technology may well be that we never lose anything. When you snort milk out your nose in the junior high lunch room, chances are it will end up on YouTube. Forever. FOREVER. Every dumbass thing one does, things that used to be forgotten, are now immortalized for better or worse.

The good news is, one no longer has to watch 8 hours of The Thorn Birds to see the naughty bit with Richard Chamberlain and Barbara Stanwyck .

Chocolate Chunk Pumpkin Cake

As a child I wouldn't touch pumpkin. Probably because my mother hated it. Ah, but as I grew up, I put away the things of a child. Now pumpkin is one of favorite vegetables. It is so versatile, it can go from appetizers all the way to dessert. This is one of my favorite cakes. The pumpkin makes it moist and and the chunks of chocolate make it gooey. I use my favorite dark chocolate and chop it into irregular hunks. I like the chunks of chocolate but if you would like it a bit more refined, you can add chocolate chips. You can also use milk chocolate if you wish.

Chocolate Chunk Pumpkin Cake

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons quatre-epice
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick softened butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup pumpkin puree or 1 15 ounce can pf pumpkin
1 1/2 cups chocolate chunks

Whisk together flour, spice, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

Cream the butter and sugar together to fluffy yellow, about 3 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time, blending well after each addition.

Stir in the pumpkin puree.

Add the flour mixture into the batter about a cup at a time.

Fold in the chocolate chunks.

Pour into a prepared Lucinda's Wood Cake Box

Bake at 300 for 90 minutes.

I like it plain, but you can add a ganache glaze to dress it up. And add even more chocolaty flavor.

Ganache Glaze

1 cup heavy cream
9 ounces chopped chocolate
1 tablespoon butter

Add the chocolate and butter to a small bowl.

Heat the heavy cream till it steam, but don't let it boil.

Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and butter.

Let it melt, then stir the mixture until smooth, bout 2 minutes.

Let it sit for about 5 minutes, then pour over the cake.

This cake travels really well, so bake one up and send it to someone you love.

Chocolate Chipotle Cake

Chocolate Chipotle Cake is not for the faint of heart. Out of the box it looks like any dense, rich, chocolate cake, but one bite tells you this is not Grandma’s chocolate cake! I use my Wood Cake Box to bake this hot and creamy treat.

The secret ingredient in this cake is the adobo sauce. Adobo sauce can be found in specialty shops and in the Mexican food section of most groceries. Adobo sauce is made from dried red jalapeño peppers known as chipoltles, some tomato and spices. You will generally find it in a 7 ounce can. For this recipe, you need to remove the solids from the peppers, leaving a smooth, thick puree. Place a mesh strainer over a bowl and force the peppers and sauce through the strainer, leaving a thick paste of pure pepper essence to give this cake its powerful punch.

Chocolate Chipotle Cake

3/4 cup unsalted butter
5 tablespoons orange juice
1 cup sugar
10 ounces dark chocolate (56%)
4 eggs
1 7 ounce can adobo
1/4 cup plain flour
1/8 teaspoon salt


Place the adobo in a mesh strainer and remove the solids.

Combine the sugar and orange juice and bring to a boil, to form a light syrup.

Break up the chocolate and place in a large bowl.

Pour the syrup over the chocolate and stir till melted.

Add the butter and continue stirring till melted.

Add your eggs one at a time, incorporating thoroughly after each addition.

Add the adobo puree, the flour and salt until just incorporated.

Pour into the lined wood cake box and bake at 300 degrees for 90 until just firm in the center.

Serve with a spoon of crème fraiche or whipped cream, as milk solids help to cool the heat.