Vegan Decadent Chocolate Cake with Gourmet Chocolate (For Mom: Taking Barefoot Contessa Vegan)

I don't know how many times I've come home from my library with the Barefoot Contessa at Home by Ina Garten cookbook. I'd bet it was at least a half dozen times. Every time I look at the somewhat lacking cookbook collection at my library (I'm not even going to address a "vegetarian" selection here), I find I reach for Ina. She comforts. She is like a mother. She has a way of cooking that eases my mind, and comforts me. She's not all coordinated and matchy-matchy in her sets, she is more like, "Hey, I bet so and so would love this--they'll be here at six, let's see what I can find at the local produce stand and pull this together!" She is simplicity and grace. All except for that "meat" she uses, I can almost always find something within the pages of her cookbooks that calls me to the kitchen. On this very difficult weekend it was Beatty's Chocolate Cake that beckoned me. Lucky for all of us, this recipe is readily available to both vegans and non alike from the Food Network website. Thank god for small miracles. With over 760 reviews and a five-star rating, I figure I am not the only one in the world who finds Ina to be of great inspiration. If you decide to vegan-ize this, here's the usual suspects of changes I made--and plus, I had some of that amazing Intemperantia chocolate waiting for me!

Beatty's Chocolate Cake Made Vegan 

-sub 2 eggs with Ener-G Egg Replacer equivalent

-sub buttermilk for vegan version (take 1 cup unsweetened soy milk and add 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar)

-certainly use gourmet cocoa powder (and I happened to have some!)

-sub with 1 cup instant de-caff. coffee crystals for her 1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee (I keep a jar of this in the fridge for baking when it calls for "coffee" which I would never add anything but decaf to any chocolate pastry or I would be bouncing off the walls--I get hyper as it is with the chocolate!)

-Note: when you bake this, you may find the cake sinks a bit in the middle. If you pull it out too soon or your oven temp. is not right, this may be the problem. Just don't freak out. Simply turn one of the layers over and put the top "dipped part" facing down and--add more frosting to the topping and in the middle if there is another "dip", and all will be fine! I even tried to re-bake the cake--I would say give it a good 45 minutes in the oven.

For the frosting:

-I used the melted chocolate squares from Intemperantia and I swear, the frosting tasted like velvet!

-I did not use any coffee crystals in this--see my comment above

-I did not use an egg yolk--totally not necessary. Just amp up the powdered sugar and use veggie margerine and a dash of vanilla extract and all will be fine.

  

I carry a heavy sorrow on Mother's Day weekend. I am a Motherless Daughter. (Which actually is the name of a book written by Hope Edelman and was given to my by one of my dear friends when my mother passed away nearly thirteen years ago. It was one of the most cathartic moments of my life, reading this book.) I want to dedicate this cake to my mom. She was not huge on chocolate like I am. She was more of an Angel Food cake gal. Always with the angel food cakes. She'd pick them apart like she was eating monkey bread. They were always in our home. That and sleeves of powdered donuts. But this is about my Mother's Day and for me, it's chocolate all the way. Sorry mom. 

My mother and I had, what can I call it, a difficult relationship. Difficult. That's the word. I am the oldest of her two daughters. I was also "unplanned" resulting in her having a shot gun wedding to my father. I was told many talks took place over the "proper" course of action and who would make what decision in all things having me. My maternal grandmother was a huge influence in my life--thankfully, taking the lead on many of the decisions involved in raising me. I could do an entire blog post on her.

My mom was adopted out of an orphanage when she was over a year old. What this had done to her mentally and emotionally, one can only guess. Many others have had the same fate and lived great lives. I would say my mother's life was not "great". But we always had a roof over our heads, clothing and food. (Not that I'd classify pork steak as food, but it was a pretty regular centerpiece in my meal time non-fond memories). 

My mom took great pride in appearances. Looks counted. Once when she was recovering from a horrible procedure, lying in the hospital bed, just awake, her second question, after, "Can you hand me my cigarettes" was, "How's my hair, do I look like a zoot suit?" A zoot suit. Seriously? She had the blackest hair of any woman I had ever known. She wore it in a pretty, short pixie most of her life. And whatever wasn't black, promptly became black thanks to Loreal or Miss Clairol. I am so happy my mother had short hair, it took courage to wear it short, it still takes courage to wear short hair and this she passed on to me.

She was beautiful. Once when she was on vacation in Hawaii with her mom and dad (she was the only child my grandparents ever had), Harry Belafonte asked her if she needed a ride--or tried to pick her up. (Now, if this wasn't him--it sure looked like him, so my mom relayed to me--he was a big deal back then, I'm sure it was him.) She had starlet qualities. She dated a mobster at one point. (I'm not sure I can say this on a blog, but I am anyway.) We were living outside of Chicago at the time. Mobs were really in then. She once met Sam Giancana, a notorious Chicago mobster (John Turturro plays him in the movie Sugartime) while on a date with another of his "mob" buddies. Who, by the way, happened to drive her around in a black limo. I have very clear memories of this--and of the shoes he lavished on my six year old self. Then, she sort of took a different course and married, and married, and married. I was left wondering why the mobster relationship never lasted. As you can imagine, I am a huge fan of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

My mother was also the first loner I had ever met. She really enjoyed her own company. Or maybe she enjoyed other company less. (I totally inherited this from her.) She was secretive. She was not someone who met you and trusted you right away. She liked the underdogs. She loved watching cooking television. (Not so much the cooking itself--though she collected some cookbooks.) She worked best alone. She did the "group" work stuff on and off--but she really thrived alone. She could smile and in a way, make you feel welcome. She could also look at you with a sinister smirk that was enough to make many of my "would be" boyfriends shrink from her sight. The only reason Mr. Thyme made the cut was because of my mother. The first time she met him, she pulled me down close and said, "Now this one's a keeper." (Not to go into the past too much, but marriage and I are familiar.) And that pretty much sealed the deal. Plus I was tired of men and dating at this point and timing is everything you know. Truth be told, I was sure in my own way, this was "the one" but with mom's blessing, I really had no other choice but to abide.

I am not a father's daughter. I am a mother's daughter. I will say that her life impacted me more than I am probably willing to admit, even at this tender age of "almost fifty". I can also say that what I learned from her was that in this life, you get one chance, if it takes you four or more times to get it right, so be it. Life is what it is. And then it's not. And one of my favorite mom-isms: Do as say, not as I do. So I try really hard to not do as she did, but to do it as I think she would want me to do it.

I'll leave this final little noteworthy thing about my mother here. (And I am sure as the Mother's Day years pass, I will have many more mom memories to share, or maybe not.) But after she died, I was going through several of her drawers and her closet--the usual thing a grieving daughter does. In the back of her closet was this shopping bag and in it were these letters--over fifty of them. I looked at them, all neatly rubber banded together. I looked at the addresses. All from different women from across the country. All hand written! Turns out my mother had a sort of pen pal relationship created from this magazine she subscribed to: Victoria Magazine. How bizarre. As I read these letters in this perfect penmanship and mostly in cursive writing and on delicate stationary, I was struck with the intimacy the letters contained. Some shared stories about their own children, others about, well, about their Victorian pursuits--like their homes or furnishings. Others made inquiries about her and her health (my mom was sick for several years). I was stunned. I was at a loss for words. What was it she was writing to them? How had this pen pal relationship begun? Where were the people today? I still have these letters. This is my ghost of my mother. These women will never know I have a piece of them or that they have a precious piece of her. Happy Mother's Day.