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Tuesday, April 01, 1997     Page:

Fallen bread dough got you down?….. Let ’em eat cake
   
Remember when I told you not every day in the kitchen is a day at the
beach? You probably thought I was patronizing you.
    Alas, no! I want to tell you that my last 32 days in the kitchen have been
like 32 days in a hellish abyss. Chaos reigned and every plan went awry, every
project became a nightmare. My biorhythms are definitely upset.
   
Perhaps Hale-Bopp has disrupted my aura.
   
Let me explain.
   
This column was scheduled to cover preparation of rustic country breads
based on an Italian sourdough starter called a “biga.” While I have been
working with yeast doughs for many years, I have never used a biga. So, being
a curious person, I enrolled in a three-day Whisk Away Weekend at the New
England Culinary Institute and off I drove to Vermont last week to study the
biga.
   
All went beautifully in class.
   
My two teammates and I produced six deliciously fragrant, perfectly shaped
loaves of herb-flecked bread in a little more than four hours. I was so
excited that as soon as I arrived home late Sunday night — after having
driven seven hours — I headed straight for the kitchen to whip up my very own
biga starter. That accomplished, I went soundly to sleep, confident I would
spend Monday blissfully producing beautiful loaves of bread, certainly enough
to supply both restaurants for the next day.
   
Well, it’s Wednesday night and I just now produced four scrawny, misshaped
loaves that even the staff looks at askance.
   
I have spent three and a half days immersed in the science of bread making,
most of which time I have been covered with sticky strands of stubbornly
adhesive dough.
   
I have tried three different brands of yeast, two different grades of flour
and many combinations thereof.
   
I have toyed with bottled water and tap water, have varied its temperature
and quantity, and have been a slave to the insistent summoning of the oven
timer.
   
Still I have not been able to reproduce those luscious loaves I so
nonchalantly threw together in Vermont less than a week ago. I suspect that my
prideful overconfidence has prompted the great god Yeast to remind me, a mere
mortal baker, that Yeast will not rise until he’s good and ready.
   
No problem. I’ll keep working on it, but I won’t let my spirit become as
flattened as my loaves.
   
After I threw the first two batches of bread dough in the garbage, I
decided that for my mental well-being I should successfully bake something
simple and fail proof.
   
So I rummaged through some new cookbooks and hit upon the following recipe
for Mexican Chocolate Cake from Treasured Recipes from the Charleston Cake
Lady by Teresa Pregnall (Hearst Bosks, 1996).
   
This recipe is so easy that, even in the funk into which I had sunk, I was
able to effortlessly create this tasty cake. And the dense chocolate was as
balm to my sticky soul.
   
The key to this chocolate lover’s dream is the incredibly rich
melt-in-your-mouth icing that is poured, while it is piping hot, onto the cake
when it, too, is still warm. This is a real crowd pleaser.
   
Mexican Chocolate Cake with Hot Fudge Icing
   
1 cup margarine or sweet butter
   
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, sifted
   
1 cup water
   
2 cups all-purpose flour
   
1 teaspoon baking soda
   
1/2 teaspoon salt
   
2 cups granulated sugar
   
1/2 cup buttermilk
   
2 large eggs
   
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
   
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 13 inch X 9 inch pan.
   
2. In a medium saucepan, melt the margarine. Stir in the cocoa and water
and bring the mixture to a boil. Set aside.
   
3. Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the
sugar. Pour the boiled mixture into the bowl and mix well.
   
4. Add the buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla and mix well.
   
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes or until a
cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. While the cake
is baking, prepare the icing
   
Icing
   
2 cups margarine or sweet butter
   
4 cups unsweetened cocoa
   
4 cups plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
   
1 pound confectioners sugar
   
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
   
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
   
1. Melt the margarine in a large saucepan.
   
2. Sift the cocoa into the saucepan and add the buttermilk. Stir the
mixture and bring to a boil.
   
3. Remove the saucepan from the heat and gradually add the sugar, nuts and
vanilla. Stir well.
   
4. Remove the baked cake from the oven and pour the hot icing over the top.
Allow the cake to cool in the pan for about 45 minutes. Cut into 2 inch by 1
1/4 inch squares and serve.
   
Food Columnist Pat Greenfield’s column is published every other Tuesday.
Write to her in care of the Arts & Leisure Team, The Times Leader, 15 N. Main
St., Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 18711-0250.
   
TIMES LEADER PHOTO/RICHARD SABATURA Mexican Chocolate Cake with Hot Fudge
Icing is not only doublechocolate, it’s fail proof.