I’m going through a file of mostly newspaper/magazine clippings from my mother, and in it I found a 3X5 card with the following recipe written in my mother’s handwriting. The thing is, all there is is a list of ingredients and a couple of minimal directions. Pretty clearly it’s some sort of chocolate cake, but there’s no title or name on the card, nothing like “Jackie Kennedy’s XXXX Cake” or “Best Ever XXXX Dessert” or anything like that. So, does it seem familiar to anyone?
It might be a forlorn hope, but how many recipes actually call for 7/8 C of anything, or have more sugar than flour? Or call for mixing in boiling water? I suppose I could just make it and see for myself, but currently hubby is being strictly rationed on eating sugar so…
If it helps at all, the newspaper clippings that show dates were all from the late-ish 1960s to mid 1970s.
Here’s the text:
1 C. sugar 1 egg
7/8 C. flour 1/2 C. milk
3/8 C. cocoa 1/4 C. oil
3/4 t. baking powder 1/2 t. vanilla
1 t. baking soda 1/4 t. salt
Combine and mix for 2 minutes.
1/2 C. boiling water
Mix in.
350 [degree sign]
Grease and flour pan(s)
~30 minuets (less?)
Note: the parts in the parentheses are that way on the card, not my being unsure what it says. My mother had very clear handwriting, and I’m super familiar at reading it.
But…I’ve just read seven recipes for chocolate pudding cake, and there are serious differences from the one on the card. I’m not talking about minor differences in exactly how much flour, or that most seem to want only baking powder not both powder and soda. But the big omission seems that they all require significant amounts of melted butter, like around 1/3 C, while NOT including the oil this one calls for. Okay, so maybe they sorta sub for each other.
The one that makes me doubt is that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the web recipes has a separate layer of sugar/brown sugar/cocoa sprinkled dry over the batter part, and then a LOT more boiling water (generally 1.25 cups) poured over the dry layer – and NOT mixed in. They all stress that.
While I don’t see how the “mix in” part on the card can mean anything other than mixing the water into the batter, probably making for a very fluid batter. So why separate it out at all? All I can think is to keep from prematurely cooking the egg?
So??? I can’t really guess what the result would be. Maybe not cake-like at all. A sort of thick gooey stuff? Maybe a ‘baked’ pudding? Though why you’d do that instead of the ordinary nearly boil in a pan version I don’t know.
My undying gratitude? But I’m not yet sure you’ve won that valuable prize.
I think you’ve nailed it! The ingredients are almost exactly double what’s on the card (the salt and vanilla are cut by 4 instead of 2) and the directions match nearly exactly! And someone (my mother?) having cut that recipe in half for their own purposes would explain the mention of pan(s), since the original needed two 8" rounds while the card version doesn’t specify at all. Might even account for the small timing difference if my mother wasn’t sure whether it would be affected.
