Last week I saw a Facebook meme that said, “Life is short. Take the trip. Buy the shoes. Eat the cake.”

I’ve set up a trip, to the American Society of Journalists and Authors conference in New York in mid-May. And I baked a dessert that my mother used to make for us: Sour Cream Chocolate Cake.

Two out of three ain’t bad.

 

The cake recipe was already on my mind, because of a batch of homemade yogurt gone awry. The starter was on the very edge of nope-buy-a-new-one. Because I wanted to believe it was okay, I used it. Magical thinking wasn’t enough, however, and the yogurt turned out smelling something like bread and something like beer. It shouldn’t smell like either of those things.

 

The culprit was wild yeast that had gotten in and crowded out the active yogurt cultures. Predictable, which is why every eight weeks or so I generally buy a new container of Mountain High yogurt and start over.

Not this week, though, which meant I was stuck with a quart of Greek-style yogurt that was too funky to eat. I tried adding extra fruit and extra sweetener but my gag reflex could not be fooled.

Which is why I thought of sour cream chocolate cake, and wondered whether sour yogurt could be used instead. I hate wasting food.

 

A voice from the past

 

I found the recipe, which she’d hand-written on one of those steno pad sheets that she kept buying long after the factory closed and her secretary job disappeared. I guess old habits die hard.

On the other side of the sheet, she wrote “Here’s that recipe you wanted” and signed it “Love, Mom.” The sight of her handwriting made me feel sad, yet again, that she never got to see me finally escape my marriage, earn a college degree and find true love in midlife. She would have loved DF, because of the way he treats me and because he also loves the fragrance of Clorox.

Turns out that weird yogurt is a perfectly fine replacement for sour cream. The cake turned out amazingly well: richly flavored but not overly chocolatey (it’s made with cocoa) and with a light yet somehow substantial texture. Mom never frosted this cake, although she did sometimes sift powdered sugar on top.

I didn’t bother decorating it. We just ate, and ate. I brought half of it to my niece’s house for our viewing of “The Walking Dead,” and brought back a lot less than half. (In our defense, three other people – one of them a teen-aged boy – were also chowing down.)

DF and I devoured what was left in an astonishingly short time. Fortunately, he took a picture of it before we started slicing. (See above.) The cake cover belonged to my grandmother. It sat on the counter pretty much 24/7, because when I was a kid people always had cake on hand for dessert and to serve with coffee when people stopped by. This cake cover is, I think, the only thing of my grandmother’s that I own.

 

Try this cake yourself

 

Having mentioned this dessert, I feel the need to share the recipe:

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

Cream together:

¾ cup butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs (I used three)

1 cup sour cream (I used weird yogurt)

2 tsp. vanilla

In separate bowl, mix:

2½ cups flour

½ cup cocoa

¼ tsp. salt

In another bowl or measuring cup, stir together:

1 cup warm water

2 tsp. baking soda

Alternately add one-third of the dry ingredients and soda/water mixture to the creamed ingredients, beating until smooth.

Pour into a greased and floured tube pan (I used an angel food cake pan because that’s what we have) and bake at 375 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes.

Generally I prefer sweets that are faster to make, such as Lightning Cake. DF bakes this one with his older granddaughter; the two of them dribble food coloring atop the batter in the pan, stirring it with toothpicks to make a kind of unicorn marble cake. Lightning Cake is another one that’s so good it doesn’t need frosting.

But this time I didn’t mind taking extra time, and dirtying extra dishes. Using the recipe was a way of communicating with my mom. She might have looked askance at the yogurt, but then again she also looked askance at sour cream. Mom never ate the stuff, buying it only for baking. For years she chose the brand that came in a drinking glass. (Anyone else remember those?)

Mom, thanks for the recipe. And forgive me for second-guessing you on the eggs, but it made the cake more moist than I recall its being. It was a real hit. Good thing I’ve got two more batches of yucky yogurt in the freezer.

 

Related reading:

• Don’t throw it out until you’ve smelled it
• The boiling bag
• Garbage in, supper out