The Best Chocolate Cake in the Universe

(I'm going to explain this like you have never, no never, ventured into baking a cake, so if it seems obvious to you, congrats, you have already leveled up! I'd also like to note that I got this recipe off the internet and just wrote stuff down on a sheet of paper, I don't have the big magic brain that came up with the boiling water part, which I am convinced is the reason this is the best cake in the universe, and I wish I knew who to thank.) 

350°

30-35 minutes

2 9” pans

2 cups of white sugar

1 ¾ cups all purpose flour

¾ cup cocoa powder

1 ½ tsp baking soda

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

½ cup veggie oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water

Set your oven to temp and make sure your baking rack is in the middle.

Prep your pans, oil and flour them and have them ready to go.  

Mix up your dry ingredients with a whisk in a big bowl.

Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla and mix for three minutes with an electric mixer.

Add a cup of boiling water and hand mix with a whisk. It is going to be very glossy and liquid, you will probably think, “Oh no! What have I done?” Relax, this cake is getting ready to blow your mind.

Mix the batch again and pour your second pan. Try hard to make them even so they cook at the same time.

Now bake it for 30 minutes and check it. A toothpick in the middle that comes out wet means keep going with the heat. Set it for five more minutes. If your pans were not even, or if your oven has hot and cool spots, one cake might need to come out first while the other one chugs along to Cake Town.

Cool your cakes. I mean it. Do it overnight. Don’t skimp on this, or your cake will crack or not come all the way out of the pan, and your frosting will melt and you will be sad, which is the wrong way to do cake. Don’t make it cake’s fault that you are impatient. The good news is that once the cake is cool you will be cutting the tops off with a bread knife to make the top even, and then you get two delicious bonus disks of cakey goodness that will be delicious all by themselves and you will eat them up and be amazed by the sturdy but moist texture of the cake you’re about to frost. Not too sweet, very chocolatey. Seriously perfect.

Frost that Cake

¾ cup butter

1 ½ cups cocoa powder

5 ⅓ cups powdered sugar

⅔ cups milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

This will make an insane amount of frosting. Be warned. However, messing with the recipe seems silly, and halving it will not be enough. So just have extra frosting. This shizz is amazing. Not too sweet, very chocolatey, totally perfect for that cake I just raved about.

Add some berries to the top. Serve it to someone you love for a special occasion. You are now a cake BOSS.

Mother's Day for the motherfuckups

Mother's Day fills me with angry secret bees.

I am a mama. I have two amazing kids. I like being a mama. I've always been motherly, in a nurturing, "Here, let me help you" kind of way. I have an A+ Infinity Surrogate Mama Friend who is utterly fabulous in all the ways I always wanted. And, those are things that are totally worth celebrating. But yet, this time of years rolls around and all my own ancient, secret mama drama comes floating to the top. I find myself forced to smile a lot when I don't mean or want to, and I try to ignore all the sappy sentimentality I never got to experience, because it might make me sob. Or double plus loud swear. Or take off running.

I grew up with a terribly young, mentally ill, alcoholic mother who slept with shiftless layabouts to propel herself forward. A woman who regularly told me I was a mistake. That my whole self, the very life of me, was a gift that she decided to give me "on the table" when she chickened out of the abortion at the last minute. She also told me she regretted her choice, that she once had the power to snuff me out but didn't, a gamble she regretted because look how terrible I turned out and how fat and stupid and how old I made her look and how few choices she could manage now that I had the nerve to eat her food and hate her boyfriends and need new shoes. There is no bouquet of weeds or pastel scripted card that covers all the feelings at the chewy nougat center of that kind of relationship.

I am not mentioning any of this because I want pity or because I think you can do anything about it, I mention it because I understand how weirdly and quietly those of us who were badly mothered can seethe and weep on a day like Mother's Day, and how hard that is to convey to people who just can't wrap their minds around it. Thankfully, we are not the majority. But those who had good mamas, or even mamas they came to love and understand later, can never ever get the pain and guilt and anger involved in never getting there, even for a tiny brief moment. Some say, "Oh, but there is still time! You can forgive, all mothers deserve to be cherished for the best gift you could ever have, she did the best she could with what she had!", but that grates even more.

I hear, "I had a good mother. Because of that good relationship with my good mother I am unable to imagine not having it, and I want to believe there is some way you can have that too, even if it just means you need to open your heart to your mother and adjust your attitude about her because we ALL had problems with our mothers and this brief time I just spent imagining the possibility of not having a loving mother has made me feel like throwing up. I hate talking about this. Why did you even bring it up? What is wrong with you?" Which is why I hardly ever do, I don't want to put anyone through even a tiny sliver of what I went through. Privately, heavily loaded words like, "Mother's Day" provoke an expansive fireworks display of words, memories, tragedies and quiet secret sucker punches, even though I can usually smile through it so no one will know.

Not every part of the word Mother makes me cringe like an abused dog. But the fact that it could makes Mother's Day a monumental effort to keep it normal on the outside. People who got to love and be loved by their mamas are luckier than they can even imagine, and the good ones deserve their the whole cherished cycle of macaroni necklaces and PB and extra sloppy J breakfasts in bed. I learned the painful hard way that no one makes time to  soothe the sulky badly parented adult in the corner who grumps about about commercial holidays, cramming down all the feels with way too damn much cake. They don't know what to say, because they can't possibly comprehend it. And maybe that's actually good. What good is  secondhand heartbreak anyway?

Mother's Day becomes Quiet Weeping and Avoidance Day, party of Me, eventually rounded out by knowing it’s just a stupid day and only has the meaning I give it, and that I have plenty of other rad mama stuff worth celebrating.

Someday I will learn how to tell this story without feeling like I’m the jerk who took a turd to a tea party.

xo

Don't you dare slip through on Nancy's push

Yearbook quotes from the 50's.

“Happy-go-lucky Klondike bubbles up for taffy apples and swims away from female obstacles"

"Edith will miss limeade and sharp clothes"

"Donna will be exploring your insides someday"

"Doris likes black olives and bowling"

"Joycie says squares and book reports are off-key, but enjoys hectic times"

And, my personal favorite: "Nancy is upset by people who go through revolving doors on her push"

Dining on potatoes and ice

I rarely get red meat any more, too expensive. It's bleak financial times up on my stove. 

Today I made potato salad, veggie broth from frozen end bits, iced tea, boiled eggs, boxed mac and cheese and a frozen burrito I found in the freezer. I remembered to make ice cubes and pot the celery I grew from a cutting. I planted two sprouting garlic bulbs for shits and giggles. And a sprouted avocado seed from my birthday a few months ago. I am not always this busy or frugal. Sometimes I sit around drinking good beer and masturbating. I'm a hedonist who's really good with some basics.

DonJohn DraperHamm (Dick)

I am am on season five of Mad Men, and DonJohn DraperHamm (Dick) certainly has a fuck about him, but I only really noticed his face and lovely chest hair. I got twitterpated watching him shave his magnificent jaw line. And any time he's shirtless there are all the hollow places where the neck and shoulder come together, which I like to imagine produce a dew of whiskey, just for me, when I wake up next to him in the morning of my micro fantasy flashes. 

But I never, no not once, noticed his package until it was a close up tabloid photo with a red circle around it and an arrow with OMG! next to it. What the hell is wrong with me? Now it is everywhere. 

Snow White is pretty messed up

Once upon a time a woman sat at an open window, in the middle of a snowstorm, doing needlework on an ebony frame. You know, how you do. She poked herself and spilled three drops of blood on the snow. She was so delighted by the color combo of blood, snow and ebony that she wished for a matching white, red and black infant. She wasn’t at all specific about the order of things, but ended up with a white baby with red lips and black hair. With barely a moment to register that she’d indeed given birth to Snow White, her very own designer baby, the woman dies. Like, immediately, which is kind of a bummer but no one dwells on it.

The dad waits a year and then marries this bitchy lady who talks to her mirror all the time about how pretty she is, and for a long time the mirror is like, “Yes, Queen, you are the super prettiest in all the land.” Until one day the mirror is like, “Wait, hold up, your seven year old stepdaughter is super hot.” Of course the Queen is furious. She’s like, “Pshaw, bitch gotta die.”

She tells a huntsman to take Snow White out into the woods, totally murder her, and bring back her juicy little kid heart. I know, what a shitty boss. The huntsman sets out to do as he’s told, cuz he knows his damn job, but Snow White starts bawling, “Boohoo don’t murder me, I’m cute and only seven.” And he realizes what a jerk move this is and he’s all. “Just go! Just run away, you’re too cute to murder! I’ll just fudge my report!” She runs off, he presents a wild boar heart to the Queen. Who then salts it. Cooks it. And eats it. What a psycho.

The terrified Snow White runs around the forest all day until she finds a small cottage, where she breaks in, eats a portion of seven dinners and far too much wine for a 3rd grader, and then falls asleep. When the seven short dudes who live there get home, they seems kinda mad about the food and wine, until they notice how cute she is, all asleep on bed seven, and they decide she can stay and be their cook and maid, but warn her to be careful of weird old ladies. They mention zero things about weird old men.

In the meantime, filled to the brim on self-righteousness and she expects to be a delicious little kid heart, the Queen consults her mirror and finds out Snow White is still out there, being all cute and living with seven little dudes. The Queen puts on some old lady make-up and Google maps that shit and marches over there while the gold digging little dudes are are at work. She sells Snow White some corset laces, then offers to lace them for her, pulling them so tight the kid can’t breath. With Snow White in a heap on the floor the Queen thinks to herself, "YAY, I just killed a seven year old and now I am the prettiest!"

Lil’ dudes get home, figure out what went down, undo the laces, Snow White wake up and they’re like, “You’ve gotta stop falling for stupid shit”.  The next day, instead of leaving someone to babysit, they head off to dig for gold. The Queen, having learned from her magical mirror that Snow White still breaths, pulls together a pretty solid and radically different old lady look and stomps back to the cottage with a poison comb. Snow White throw open the window and says, "I can't talk to you or open the window.” The Queen’s all, “While you talk to me through this open window why don’t you let me brush your hair?” The moment the teeth sink in, BAM. Epic hair poisoning.

Lil’ dudes get home, and once again Snow White is passed out on the floor and none of the dishes are done. What the hell!? Doesn’t this kid know how to babysit herself? One of the little dudes figures out a hair poisoning happened. They remove the comb and Snow White wakes up and tells them about her different old lady visit and they're like, "Listen kid, when weird old ladies show up out of no where, don’t let them comb your hair, or dress you, or brush your teeth, or take you skydiving or ask you to get in their van, seriously." You have to be really specific with kids.

The next day the seven tiny guys head back to their super fun rock busting jobs. Old lady number three shows up at the cottage. Snow White opens the window like a badass and gives the old woman some stink eye and says, “I’m not going skydiving with you because you’re old!” And the old woman says, “Listen honey, I know other old ladies have hurt you in the past, but I just wanted to share this totally normal and amazingly safe apple with you!” She whips out an apple that is half white and half red, an obviously weird apple by any standard. “Look, I will eat half to prove it."  She eats the white half herself, offers the rest to the kid with totally dysfunctional survival instincts, and BAM, the kid hits the floor and the Queen skips off to hear from her magic mirror that she’s still got it.

Lil’ dudes get home. They are immediately devastated by their own lack of foresight. They can't find any weird poison thing on the kid, no new clothing, magic lipstick or enchanted spit curl, so they just accept the idea that the kid is dead. They wash her face with wine. The kid stays pretty. This kid makes a super pretty corpse. Her corpse is so pretty they make her a glass box so they don’t have to stop looking at her, and for the first time, every single day, all day long, she gets at least one babysitter.  

But check this out, a full grown prince is riding through the forest when he sees the pretty kid in her glass box and he's like, "Yeeees! This hot dead kid is just what I’ve been looking for!" So he offers to buy her from the old guy but he's like, "No! We’ve worked too hard." and the Prince says, "Well, I won’t take no for an answer because this hot dead kid is going to look perfect in my castle and I really really want it and also, here is some money you don’t have to scrape out of a rock.” So the tiny old dude is like, "MMmmmOK."

The Prince sends for help with the box, but some clodhopper trips on a bush, which bumps the coffin, which dislodges the poison apple chunk, which revives the hot seven year old, which makes the prince go, "Let’s get married!”

The Queen gets an invitation to the wedding of this Prince, but her mirror told her the bride is way prettier than she is, so at first the Queen is like, "Pshch. I'm not going to that wedding, I murder people who are hotter than I am.” But then, to check out the competition and maybe mac down of some sweet ass bride heart, she picks out an outfit and goes anyway.

When the Queen arrives she is swarmed by paparazzi, which is initially thrilling, “They are waiting for me!” she thinks. Someone presents her with a pair of special dancing shoes. They are made of hot lead, and she is forced to dance before her tiny nemesis, until she dies, which is the kind of entertainment they had at weddings before there were waffle bars and photo booths.  

The necrophiliac turned pedophile and his vengeful child bride lived happily ever after.  

The End.