Double Chocolate Fudge Cake

This week a couple of things happened, first, it was my birthday, then second (and most interesting) was that my youngest daughter decided she likes to bake. So…she made me a birthday cake as a surprise.This was a huge surprise, because up to that moment she had always told me that she didn’t like to cook or bake and had no interest in it at all. Anyway, she made this terrific Double Fudge Chocolate Cake, which is a recipe from the Perfect Pear Catering days, iced it with butter cream icing, and then garnished it with fresh raspberries from the garden. Wowee, it was so delicious!

The next day she made a vanilla layer cake and chocolate cupcakes, and the following day she made a triple layer marble cake. We’ve run out of eggs and sugar now, so she will have to find another passion until I get around to grocery shopping.

Here’s the recipe for the cake and icing. I think we are at the end of the raspberries now, though, so you might have to find another fruit to garnish.

Double Chocolate Fudge Cake

makes one 2 layer cake

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare 2 8 or 9 inch round cake pans.

In a medium size bowl using electric beaters, combine 2 eggs with 1 cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon soft butter, 1 cup canola oil, 1/2 cup buttermilk, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Sift together 1/2 cup cocoa, 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Then stir in 1 cup of boiling water. Pour batter into prepared pans, bake for 30 minutes. Check with a toothpick to make sure cakes are cooked through. Cool on racks.

Butter Cream Icing

Beat together 1 pound of softened butter with 5 cups of sifted icing sugar until creamy. Beat in 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 tablespoon of milk. Beat until smooth. Spread on cooled cake.

More about the chicks

OK, the chicks are almost 5 weeks old now, so officially they are now pullets. Let’s just call them the blonds and brunettes. They are all friendly, curious, and crazy. Honestly – they are so funny! They don’t like change, and these are the crazy things that have happened lately.

First of all, I needed to change the feeder from the little baby chick feeder to the big girl feeder. How hard can that be? So, after cleaning out their lovely chick house as I do every day, I gently placed the new feeder down on the floor, expecting only joyful peeping, but what really happened? Dead silence and accusatory stares. If they had hands to place on their hips they certainly would’ve. They just stood there, stunned and well, freaked out. I had to sit in there for 15 minutes to get them to relax and eat. Sensitive little darlings.

Two days later I decided we needed another change; wood chips instead of newspaper on the floor. Joke was on me. As I (gently) sprinkled the wood chips on the floor, the chickens FREAKED OUT! Oh, I might as well have been pouring snakes onto the floor. They screamed (in their chicken sort of way) and ran and hid behind their new feeder. Yep, once again I had to hang out (this time for for 20 minutes) to make sure they calmed down and survived the night.

Maybe you are wondering how I became such a knowledgeable chicken rancher. It’s all book knowledge from a book called ‘Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces’ by Barbara Kilarski. It’s a great entertaining and informative read, I highly recommend it if you are at all interested in raising chickens.

Chicken Ranching

June 19th was a big day on the farm – we got chickens! Twelve cute little fragile fuzz balls. They’ve been keeping us busy, cleaning the hen house, refilling the water, refilling the feed, taking pictures. Who knew they ate, drank and pooped so much? It will all be worth it when they start laying their eggs. Really, farm fresh eggs are such a treat.

Here’s a picture of one of the chicks perching. It is sooo cute when there are several of them perching at once.

Anyway, that’s it for now. More pictures to come, now that I’ve figured out how to do it!