Lundi: Recipes

I'm not much for baking. I love to cook but baking involves measuring and then that turns into, as Dan Connor put it on the old “Roseanne” show, “… some kind of recipe!” I will, however make this cake quite happily despite the fact that it’s all I can do to make a box brownie mix work.

Known as the Green Man Cake, the original recipe comes from Silver Ravenwolf’s book Halloween. The book is great, and jam packed with handy facts, crafts, spells and, yes, recipes for our current season and beyond. It’s still in print from Llewelynn and I can’t recommend it enough.

So here is my take on Silver’s Green Man Cake which is great as a sheet or layer cake or, in the current case here at my house, as cupcakes (in pirate cups with paper Jolly Rogers hoisted above the frosting).

3 ounces chocolate chips
1 stick butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
2 tsps baking soda
1 cup sour cream
1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt chocolate chips either in a ban Marie or in the microwave (approximately 1 minute on high). Allow to cool but not to solidify. Put softened butter, sugar and eggs in a large bowl and mix (by hand or with a mixer) until fluffy. Add vanilla and chocolate. Mix for another minute or so until batter is well blended. Sift flour and baking soda together. Add to batter alternately with sour cream and mix thoroughly. Add boiling water and mix again. The batter will be runny.

Spray the bottoms of two 9 inch round baking pans with cooking spray. Flour lightly. Pour batter into pans and bake about 35 minutes. Let cool 15 to 20 minutes before removing.

If you like you can add a tsp of green food coloring with the vanilla, thus creating the “Green Man” part of your cake. Great for this time of year when the ancestors might appreciate an offering of cake or for spring, when the Green Man returns. Jouir de ~