Happy Father's Day!
Hoping that the weather will co-operate on Sunday and that everyone will be able to enjoy the day.
My Pop loved chocolate cake.
Each Sunday after Mass he would pick up one, along with a half dozen loaves of bread, from the Italian bakery.
Maybe your Dad enjoys chocolate cake, too.
It’s been a while since I posted a chocolate cake recipe.
A little over a year ago I posted the recipe for Ma’s Dark Chocolate Cheesecake.
Over the years I’ve posted quite a few cheesecake recipes.
Cheesecake was a staple on the program The Golden Girls.
Whenever the girls had to gather for something major, out came the cheesecake.
Most women would admit cheesecake is basic comfort food.
Well, it’s definitely time for me to post another chocolate cake recipe.
And with Father’s Day coming, why not go for a special one.
German Chocolate Cake takes a bit of work, and is delicious.
Mrs. Kekelia had given me a slice when I was four years old.
Well, I told Ma about it, Ma asked Mrs. Kekelia for the recipe, Mrs. Kekelia kindly gave her a recipe, and Ma made her usual tweaks.
Don’t ask me which version I found most delicious.
Ma also found a recipe for German Chocolate Cake on a box of Baker’s Chocolate.
Here it is, with Ma’s tweaks.
McCain Deep’n Delicious Chocolate Cake is a Canadian treat.
A few years ago KFC included a cake in a very popular bucket deal.
If you can’t find McCain cakes in your local grocery store this is a good match.
Enjoy!!
Hints:
To make soured milk, or a substitute for buttermilk for cooking, add vinegar to regular milk.
For example, place 2 teaspoons vinegar in a measuring cup and add enough milk to make 3/4 Cup soured milk.
It’s not an exact science.
Store leftover cakes in the fridge.
About the German Chocolate Cake…
For best results, bring the ingredients to room temperature.
You can make the cake in advance. Let the layers cool completely, then wrap them in plastic wrap and place in a freezer bag.
Layers can be frozen for up to one month and can be frosted while frozen.
Both frostings can be made ahead and stored in a covered container in the fridge.
Remove containers from the fridge about an hour before you need them so that they’ll be easier to spread.
About the McCain’s Deep ‘n Delicious cake…
You can use a piping bag fitted with a star tip to make the frosting look like the real thing.
It tastes just as good if you just spread it on the cake.
German Chocolate Cake
For the Cake:
Grease 3 8-inch round cake pans.
Line bottom of pans with waxed paper.
Sift together
2 Cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Place in a sauce pan
4 ounces German or Sweet Chocolate
1/2 Cup water
Melt the chocolate and water together over low heat.
Set aside to cool.
Place in a large mixer bowl
1 Cup softened butter
2 Cups sugar
Cream until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add, one at a time, beating after each addition
4 large egg yolks
Blend in
1 teaspoon vanilla
the melted chocolate
Making 3 dry and 2 liquid additions, add
the flour mixture
1 Cup buttermilk
Blend at medium speed after each addition.
Preheat oven to 350º F
Place in a medium mixer bowl
4 large egg whites
Beat at medium speed until foamy.
Increase the speed to high and beat until stiff peaks form when the beaters are lifted.
With a spatula gently fold about a quarter of the egg whites into the mixture.
Repeat 3 times.
Spread batter in prepared pans.
Bake 30 minutes, until cake tester inserted in centre comes out clean.
Remove from oven. Run a spatula around the layers.
Let the layers cool in the pans on a wire rack for 15 minutes.
Remove the layers from the pans and let them cool completely.
For the Coconut Pecan Frosting:
Chop
pecans to make 1 1/2 Cups
In a large saucepan combine
12 ounces evaporated milk
1 1/2 Cups sugar
4 egg yolks
3/4 Cup butter
Cook over medium heat about 5 minutes, stirring, until mixture comes to a full boil.
Stirring constantly, cook 2 more minutes, until mixture is a caramel colour.
Remove from heat and stir in
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 Cups coconut
the chopped pecans
Cool slightly.
Beat until cool and thick.
Place an upside down cake layer on a serving platter.
spread one-third of the frosting over the layer.
Top with second layer and cover with half of the remaining frosting.
Top with third cake layer and cover with remaining frosting.
McCain’s Deep ‘n Delicious
For the Cake:
Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan
Line with parchment up the length of 2 sides.
Sift together in a medium bowl
1 3/4 Cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 Cups granulated sugar
2/3 Cup cocoa powder, sifted
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350º F
Place in a large mixer bowl
2 eggs
2/3 Cup buttermilk
1/2 Cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
Whisk together.
Stir in flour mixture until just combined.
Whisk in
1/2 Cup hot water
Pour into prepared pan.
Bake 30 minutes, until cake tester inserted in centre comes out clean.
Let cake cool in pan on a rack for 30 minutes.
Place rack on top of cake, then invert and remove baking pan and parchment.
Cool completely, about 30 minutes, then invert cake onto serving platter.
For the Icing:
Combine in a medium bowl
4 1/2 Cups icing sugar, sifted
1/2 Cup cocoa powder, sifted
Place in a large mixer bowl
3/4 Cup butter, softened
Beat on medium-high, until fluffy.
Reduce speed to medium-low and, making 3 dry and 2 liquid additions, add
icing sugar mixture
1/3 Cup milk
Pipe with a star tip or spread icing with a spatula on cake.
~~~
This is a piece I wrote in 2006 for my CKUW show. Hope that it gives you a chuckle.
Stay safe and well, everyone!
I hope all you Dads will have a great Father's Day.
People talk about how Christmas has changed over the years. Well, I think Father's Day has changed even more than Christmas has.
In the fifties, Father's Day was pretty simple. It was a snap to shop for Dads. Moms were hard. There were so many different toilet waters. Lipstick colours changed every year. One year Lucille Ball Red was popular. The next year every lady was wearing Flaming Fuschia. I mean, how was an elementary school kid supposed to know what to get?
Dads were easy. They always needed a pair of socks or another tie. There WAS something about an Aqua Velva man. The bottles of blue water came in a variety of sizes and they were all cheap. If you had to soften Dad up for the report card that was coming, you could splurge on Old Spice or English Leather for a few pennies more.
If you'd blown all your money for Mother's Day - an easy thing to do - you could get another tube of Brylcreme. Those little dabs went fast and Dad always needed another tube so he could look debonaire and Mom could run her fingers through his hair.
Keeping the family car spiffy has always been a Dad's job. Remember when they were unwrapping their presents in the movie A Christmas Story? Dad Darren McGavin was thrilled to get a tin of Simonize for his car. It was big. It was heavy. It was cheap.
That was the Golden Age for Dads gifts. But now? Let's just say that Dads are getting to be as big a problem as Moms are, gift-wise.
I always thought of men as being rough and ready in their grooming needs. I raised a son. He once took a bath, answered nature's call, then went straight to drying everything - and I mean everything - with the bath towel. He thought cutting out a small step would save some time. At least that was his explanation when I asked him about the skid marks on the yellow towel.
Now men have discovered their inner Alan Alda. They know about brands like Nivea. Soap on a rope has lost its oomph. Blades and a can of Barbasol just won't cut it anymore. Guys have discovered grooming sets: shower gels, body washes, face scrubs, after shave balms and a post shave soother that the nice sales clerk swore will control his beard's growth. You know, the same crap and sales pitches they've been throwing at women for years.
And for the guy who's really into his feminine side, there are events like the Papa-razzi Package at the Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver. The 36 hour getaway includes an hour-long massage, a facial, foot care, a souvenir shaving kit and a round of golf. The package costs $2,165 plus taxes and airfare if you don't happen to live in Vancouver. Hey, femininity never came cheap.
Tools have always been popular gifts. Something is always getting lost or broken, right? Time was when, after being showered with a 32 piece wrench set, a 14 piece clamp set and a 65 piece screwdriver set, every Dad was ready, willing and eager to wrench, clamp and screw any and everything in the house.
Fellows, I was wondering… if a man receives a 205 piece drill and screw driving set (consisting of screw driving bits, nut driving bits, spade bits, high speed drill bits, hole saws, masonry drill bits, sanding drums and a countersink which, I've been told, are ideal to use on wood, metal, plastic, brick, mortar and concrete) would he really use them all or just stick to a half dozen favourite pieces? You know, the way we women use the same favorite spoons and pans in the kitchen. Sometimes wretched excess is just, well, excessive.
Speaking of the kitchen, a Dad's cooking used to be basic. Raw meat plus fire equaled hard small hockey pucks served with ketchup and relish in a bun. Raw onion slices were added for the July first weekend. Up to now the most exciting thing I'd ever seen a man do at the barbecue was to stick a can of beer up a chicken's butt so it could stand and roast. It looked almost patriotic.
Dads made simple basic food. And healthy. No E coli bacteria could ever survive a Dad's barbecue.
Now folks are dropping like flies because Dads have discovered cuisine. Ketchup and mustard have disappeared. Guys who flunked Geography and can't find their way to their in-laws across town without a CAA trip-tik are now into Japanese, Mexican and Thai recipes.
While at the Liquor Commission, I picked up the freebie Flavours magazine. On the cover it said Sassy sauces for your grilled goodies. Uh, huh. I don't know what my Dad would've thought of things like sorrel-spinach sauce. On salmon, yet.
There was also an article about the joys of salt water. According to the folks at Flavours, soaking food in brine is the key to a killer barbecue. I don't know. I remember one picnic forty years ago when the boat tipped over, everyone and everything fell out and everything got doused with good old salty Atlantic Ocean water. No one thought that was anything worth repeating ever again.
Shish kebabs used to be simple. Meat, onion, green pepper… meat, onion, green pepper… meat, onion, green pepper… until you ran out of everything. Well, now bamboo skewers aren't good enough anymore. Oh, no. One recipe in Flavours should earn a cook a Boy Scout badge. Get this: Peel fresh ginger and cut into several four inch long skewers. Then carve the ginger on one end into a sharp point. If your local grocer is out of long chunks of ginger, don't panic. You can also do the same thing to lemongrass stalks.
Oh, pull-lease!! If God meant us to spend our short summers carving little sticks He never would've made those nice clean bags of bamboo skewers. Life - and a Manitoba summer - is way too short for that kind of nonsense.
There was a time when a bag of coal big enough to burn down a house could warm the cockles of a Dad's heart. It could keep a fellow busy for a whole summer's worth of Sundays. Now charcoal has some competition. Have you been exposed to Mesquite-Flavoured wood chips? Our neighbour, Lou, really loves mesquite. He chopped some chips up and sprinkled them on the salad. Okay. Lou isn't quite right in the head. Last week he served up what he called grilled pizza. Uh, huh. Like we didn't notice the take out boxes stacked next to his recycling.
We have an old gas barbecue that chugs along with 11,000 BTUs. It has been doing a dandy job of turning meat into blackened briquets for quite a few happy family gatherings. Have you seen the new barbecues? When did guys start pimping their grills? The big selling feature for these monsters is how many BTUs are under the hood.
I checked the dictionary. BTU means British Thermal Units. Well, that was a big help. I needed to get BTU into terms I could understand. I looked around my house and found that my gas water heater has 30,000 BTUs. The heater is plastered with little notes from Furnaceman. Cheery messages like: Third degree burns can occur in six seconds when the water is 60º C. Death is also possible.
Hmmm… My water heater has 30,000 BTUs and it can get water hot enough to kill somebody.
A Kalamazoo Bread Breaker Two Dual-Fuel grill with an infrared rotisserie cradle system and a side burner has a 154,000 BTU capacity. It has a temperature gauge that reaches 1000º F. It also has nighttime grilling lights. Why? Would a middle-aged hubby, after his 3 a.m. pee, get an uncontrollable urge to wander out to the Kalamazoo and grill a couple of turkeys?
According to the manufacturer, it's geared to the Man cook with fire market segment.
Middle-aged men, who normally think it's a hassle to reheat leftovers in a microwave, are gathering around these monster barbecues and acting like a bunch of teenage boys. They're checking under the hood, twisting dials and rattling off phrases like "Mounted smoker box… warming rack… hi-dome cooking lid… porcelain coated cooking grid… heat plates" with the same slobbering enthusiasm most had for their first car.
There are also barbecue accessories. I'm not talking long handled forks and aprons that tell folks to kiss the cook.
The Centro food prep station is a buffet, cooler and more. It can be connected to the barbecue to create a complete outdoor kitchen. Hey, fellas! There's a room that has all this stuff. You're welcome to come and flex your cooking muscles all year round. Sorry the oven only goes to 500º F, but, we girls have been able to crank out complete holiday dinners in it. it's called the kitchen.
Maybe the Discovery Channel was trying to do a public service. They recently had a special on the 1883 Krakatoa catastrophe. When Krakatoa went Kabooie, it produced an ash cloud. The ashes and gases reached 1000º F. Most of the people in a 30 mile radius were killed by the extremely hot air which liquified their lungs.
Dads, if some fool gave you the Bread Breaker, think of Al Gore and take it back.
The ozone layer will thank you.
The environment will thank you!
The lungs of everyone within 30 miles will thank you!!
And, most important, the family's burgers and wieners will thank you!!!
