Page 13 - Chocolate Cake Doctor

C h o c o l a t e

f o r t h e S o u l

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hey say there are smells of frost ng and topped with toasted
i
childhood, scents so strongly pecans. You want to teach children
rooted in your soul that patience? Leave an impeccably frosted

decades later a whiff of that chocolate cake resting on the kitchen
aroma immediately takes you back. For counter until dinnertime. For us, it was
me, the strong, profound, and pro - torturous. My sisters and I would sneak
vocative scent of chocolate cake is into the kitchen, stick a finger into the
so deeply etched in my psyche frosting, and then run like
that my mind shifts to the past crazy. What my mother did-
whenever there’s a choco- n’t know!

late cake baking in the The same unbridled joy
oven: My mother has just I felt as a chocolate-snatch-
frosted a chocolate layer cake ing child accompanied me as
for my tenth birthday. The cake is I tested, wrote, and assembled
warm, the milk is cold, and life is good. this book on how to doctor a cake mix to
In my house, birthdays, visiting rel- create stupendous chocolate desserts,
atives, a sister coming home from col- ranging from dark deep chocolate to
lege were all occasions for a dark choco - pale sweet German to creamy white. If
late layer cake or a buttermilk choco ate this is work, then I am the luckiest
l
sheet cake, coated in chocolate pan working stiff alive.