White Trash Mama

"Hi, you've reached Laura. I'm not able to get to the phone right now, so please leave a message at the tone......beep"

'Hi, um, Laura....I'm running a little late and was wondering if 9:30 would work for you? I know I told you 9:00, but I had to bake a cake this morning and, well, there was sifting. As I'm sure you know, sifting sometimes comes with complications.....like 2 little girls who really want to help mama cook and double your measuring time...and then if they mash the 3 cups of flour flat when you turn your back, you have to sift it all over again....with their help. again. That, and the sneezing. Sifting gives me sneezing fits every time. Weird. Oh! And I know it's not a dressy thing or anything, but I will be wearing a dress because...sneezing after four kids....well, I....I'm now out of clean jeans this morning, so Skirt it is! So just as soon my cake timer goes off, we'll be right over! Thanks!'

Quite the morning.


So here's the cake:
Actually, that's Martha's picture. I didn't get a picture of mine. It was delicious, but my frosting ....my very expensive and time consuming frosting....didn't turn out and I had to make due with canned buttercream with a little pancake syrup stirred in at the last minute. Jen posted a picture of this cake quite a while back and I've been drooling at the thought of it ever since. She's on vacation or I'd have emailed her a dozen times about this cake today. I'm a Duncan Hines girl most days, but this cake has me sold on the real thing now. Okay, I've never really been a Duncan Hines girl. More of a homemade frosting on a Duncan Hines cake kind a girl. But the cake is really just an excuse to use the frosting.

Here's my favorite (and easy) chocolate frosting:

1 stick butter
3 heaping Tb cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tb strong coffee
1 tsp good vanilla
milk & powdered sugar (couldn't begin to tell you how much of these, and it doesn't really matter)

Melt butter and cocoa together in the microwave. Pour into bowl and add salt & coffee. Beat in about 4 cups of powdered sugar, the vanilla, and about a cap full of milk. Just keep beating back and forth, adding in a capful of milk or a cupful of powdered sugar until you get the perfect consistency for your tastes. Generally, the mixture will get dry and crumbly, but suddenly one capful of milk will fix it all and it's perfection out of nowhere. Never add more than one cap of milk at once because you'll be dumping in way more powdered sugar than should be necessary following all the natural laws of physics, but it's the truth I tell you. honest.

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