Several days of rain---well, the plants need it and it will replenish the creek.

The creek doesn’t cross our property, but it cuts across the property of our neighbors. Most of them stay well back of the banks to protect the fish and other wildlife. Some don’t give a damn. The tweakers across the street haven’t had electricity or water for almost four months and they use it for their water supply. Every few days someone slips out of the woods with a couple of five gallon buckets.

No one is even sure how many people are camping over there. We have No Trespassing signs at the front of our driveway because tweakers have cased our new house twice. We’ve even had a tweaker Peeping Tom we nicknamed Pikachu because he was always trying to get a peek at you. I’m not disregarding the danger of meth or what has happened to my neighborhood because of it. But if people want to destroy themselves with household cleaners, you can’t stop them. You can, however, protect yourself.

All of our neighbors have asked us if we keep a gun in the house. I don’t know anything about guns other than which end is the business end. For years I’ve talked about taking a gun safety class so I can at least handle one safely but never have done it. My neighbor has said several times she’ll teach me firearms safety and another offered to lend me a weapon, unregistered, for protection.

I can’t keep a gun in the house. I just can’t.

But I don’t tell the tweakers that.

Our self-defense is simple: we rarely leave home. When we do, it’s usually when our neighbors are home and can keep an eye on things. Last Saturday we went to a How to Win at the State Fair class where I was given the Open Class, Non-Animal Departments Baking Competition 2008 Washington State Fair rules. They run seven pages of two column 9-point type. Section A lists the Heritage Recipe Contest, which requires a recipe, a product, and a 200-word essay, which, I found out, should make the judges cry if you want to win.

I cook and I make bread, but cakes and cookies are the fab GF’s thing and she has won those big rosette ribbons. This year the fab GF decided to expand her baking competition repertoire and get the inside scoop on competing. I tagged along to the class because honestly, spending time with the fab GF is fabulous, and hey, I want to win one of those rosettes, too.

Don’t ask me why. I just want one.

Two gals gave the class. They talked about the Food Preservation competition (it’s all about technical issues like food safety, which I didn’t know) and the Baking Competition (all about look and taste, which I did know). There were rules about head space and portion size and ingredients. The food preservation gal said that they never tasted the canned products because that would be wasting food and wasting food was immoral. And that I happen to agree with.

So the destruction of the cake a few days later was immoral as well as messy.

This chocolate cake recipe is my grandmother's. Every summer when I was growing up we would have a family reunion at Lake Minnehaha and my grandmother would bring this cake. She did not usually bake and rarely cooked, though Rose, my mom, says she made a great corned beef and cabbage.

I called Rose for the recipe but she refused to photocopy it even when I explained that if I wanted a real shot at winning the Heritage Recipe contest, a copy of the bespattered recipe in my dead granny’s handwriting would certainly make me a contender. But Rose refused; my grandmother had misspelled “margarine” as “marjoram” and it would have embarrassed her for people to see that.

And my grandmother was nobody’s granny. She had been a lilac-scented white-glove-wearing lady. She did not know how to cook or clean or bake before she married. But when she had heard enough from my grandfather about the chocolate cake that a friend’s wife made, my grandmother decided she would learn to bake one. If that woman could do it, it couldn’t possibly be too hard.

This was the cake they had on special occasions, though it doesn’t seem like there were many after my grandfather died. Rose can’t talk about her childhood without weeping. They were poor, so poor Rose ironed clothes to earn keep for herself, her sister, and her two brothers. She hates to iron but won’t let anyone else do it. And she has never made this cake.

This is understandable on a technical level alone. I watched my grandmother bake several times and she always used a coffee mug and cereal spoons for her measurements and never set the oven temperature the same. She would splash in cold coffee whenever it struck her. She couldn’t tell you what to put in or when. She would wander the kitchen taking things out and putting them back and an hour later, cake. Really really good cake.

My first try was pretty close. It was a little dry (I baked it too long) and I didn’t make the frosting right. I had creamed the butter and sugar, so it wasn’t shiny, and it was hard to spread. But I had gotten the flavors right and I had gotten our 50-year-old oven to work properly. So the next time I made it, I had more confidence.

I don’t really know how the cake started on fire.

There was a little bit of smoke, and then a lot of smoke, and then the fab GF asked calmly if I had checked my cake recently. The alarm hadn’t gone off yet, so I was a little surprised when I opened the oven door and there was a green flame I had to slap out with an oven mitt. I carried the smoldering ruin out to the porch, where it puffed smoke for another hour.

And it smelled horrible, like someone had taken a blowtorch to a box of Sugar Pops. We’ve had the windows wide open since and the stink still lingers.

But when I sliced off the crusty burnt top, it looked pretty good. The fab GF and I ate the cake guts without even bothering with forks until there was nothing left but cinders.

Recipes

Preheat to 325F, middle rack. Bake for 20 minutes, depending on your oven. If you’re making a layer cake, butter and flour the pans and double the recipes.

Cake
1 stick of unsalted butter (organic without coloring if you can find it)
1 cup brown sugar (I use light)
2 eggs (room temperature; stick them in your armpits if they’re cold))
2 cups flour (I use cake flour but regular flour will do)
2/3 cup cocoa (Ghirardelli makes a good one)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup organic sour cream or sour milk (You can sour it with vinegar the day before or combine heavy cream and buttermilk, but you have to do this a couple days ahead of time. If you buy it, make sure that it’s only sour cream and nothing else.)
Cold coffee (about half a cup)

Let the butter sit for a bit to soften up. Blend eggs and vanilla (and a couple tablespoons of cold coffee if you feel inclined) until thoroughly mixed. Mix together the flour, cocoa, and baking soda.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add egg mixture. Beat well and slowly add about half of the flour mixture, scraping the sides frequently. Splash in coffee as you are inclined. As the mixture gets dryer, add in the sour cream and the rest of the flour mixture.

The batter will be fairly stiff.

Pour into cake pan and spread out as evenly as you can. I usually clean up the bowls, beaters, and spatula while the batter is resting. Bake at 325F and for about 20 minutes. Watch like a hawk.

Frosting

½ stick of butter
3 heaping tablespoons cocoa
1 ½ - 2 cups powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 cup toasted walnuts (my grandmother never toasted the walnuts and Rose prefers them untoasted)
(Most butter cream recipes require milk, but try cold coffee instead)

Let the butter sit out until it’s shiny. Mix the dry ingredients. Whip the butter until it changes to a very light yellow and fluffy. Slowly add dry ingredients and vanilla. Fold in toasted walnuts with a spatula. Spread on the completely cooled cake.