I Was A Teenage Vegan CookBlog

I have somehow accumulated, mostly through maternal and paternal munificience, a slew of peridodical subsriptions to such publications of worth and reknown as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Wilson Quarterly. While all of these are the definite article (except you, “The” National Geographic. For shame), The Week is the only one that not only lives up to its name, but also includes an entire page devoted to frequently delicious-looking and occasionally vegetarian recipes. This past week they featured a recipe for cake from none other than my newly (and thankfully) departed home, Maryland. Feeling a twinge of something entirely unlike nostalgia, I decided to tackle this eight-layered behemoth. Then I read the ingredients list again and realized that it not only called for “evaporated milk” (whatever that is), but also, instead of actually being a recipe from scratch, instructed you to purchase one package of yellow cake (!) mix “preferably Duncan Hines”. Then I remembered how much I disliked living in Maryland and decided to make an almost entirely different and improvisatory cake recipe altogether. This is madness? This is Cake Town.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 3/4 cups cocoa
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. baking pwdr
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 1/4 cups soy milk
• 1/2 cup veg. oil
• 18 tbsp. corn syrup
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 10 tbsp. margarine
• 3 cups pwdrd sugar
• 1/2 cup pnt butter
• 6 oz. choc. chips
• 8 oz choc. bar

Equipment: Oven, Mixing bowls, 3 (or more) cake pans, egg beater, whisk, saucepan, rubber spatula, refrigerator, cake plate.

Music: Smart Went Crazy - Con Art

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Lightly oil and flour cake pans and set aside.
2. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a mixing bowl and whisk together.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together 2 cups of soy milk, the oil, 1 cup (16 tbsp.) corn syrup, sugar, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until smooth.
4. Pour the mixture evenly into your cake pans and bake for 20-30 minutes (depending on how many pans you’re using, what size they are, how much of a rush you’re in, and how much time elapses before you remember to set the timer) until the cake is firm, it has begun to pull away from the sides of the pan slightly, and a (steak) knife driven into its heart comes out clean accompanied by the shrieking sound of the demise of its damned, immortal soul. Set cakes aside to cool.
5. Divide chocolate/candy bars in half. Chop one half into fine crumbs and the other into medium-sized chunks (or shavings if you have a box grater and want to get all fancy). Store these in the fridge for now.
6. In a small mixing bowl, beat 1/2 cup margarine, the powdered sugar, and 1/4 cup soymilk until smooth, then mix in peanut butter to taste.
7. When the cakes are fully cooled, remove the first one from a pan (a good way to do this is to put one hand palm down on top of the cake and turn the entire pan upside down so that the cake is resting on your hand, remove the pan (gently prying at it with a knife if you need to), then putting a plate on the bottom of the cake and flipping it back over onto the table). Spread the top of it liberally with peanut butter frosting all the way out to the edges. Sprinkle the frosting with the finely chopped chocolate bar bits.
8. Repeat step 7 (minus the whole cake flipping bit) with the remaining layers, including the top one.
9. When all of the layers are assembled, melt the chocolate chips in a saucepan or microwave and stir in 2 tbsp. margarine and corn syrup while still hot. Quickly pour the mixture on top of the cake and use a rubber spatula to smooth it out and work it down the sides.
10. Cover the top of the cake with the coarsely chopped chocolate pieces.
11. Refrigerate 2-3 hours before serving, or until you just can’t wait any longer.

Everyone was pretty amazed by how well this cake turned out, which is good because it keeps the illusion of my kitchen wizardry alive through a relatively small amount of effort. A large part of the actual credit goes to peanut butter and chocolate, which were welcome accomplices as always. I guess I should thank Maryland for giving me something fairly distasteful (in a suburban americana sort of way) as inspiration for my little culinary insurrection. Granted, my cake doesn’t have eight layers, folds, or divine wu-tang sword techniques, but three is a perfectly respectable number, downright Christian, if you will, and that I’m sure should make our feisty neighbors to the South just as pleased as punch.