French Chocolate Cake

I have no idea if it is French, but this cake connects me to my Midwestern roots.

Momma copied recipes.

Recipes that were important enough to painstakingly write out by hand. She filed each one neatly in her small wooden recipe box decorated with a rooster caricature. It was considered cute in the late 50s.I know her penmanship, the small careful scrawl, not at all pretty, but functional. The work of a young woman trying to collect what she would need in her future role as a wife.

I try to piece together the person she was through her recipe box.

She loved cooking. Baking mostly, I think. She clearly had a penchant for fine food as well as wholesome, hearty meals. I can tell this by the wide variety of recipes she copied. Everything from soufflé to cornbread made it onto a 3 x 5 card and into the box.

Perhaps a piece of the DNA I inherited included a passion for food. Maybe my love of cooking comes more from the detective work I put into learning about her.

For me, this collection of hand-copied recipes in a quaint wooden box is a way she could pass on the essence of herself. She did not live much past my 4th birthday.

I meet her in these recipes. Her life ended in the 60s. There are so many things she didn’t know. She was probably aware of the moon landing. Although only 11 short days later, she would see the moon from another angle. The spiritual plane she was about to embark on would give her a perspective well beyond Neil Armstrong’s.

She didn’t know about the internet. She could not foresee how easy it would be for me to find a substitution for Chocobake.

Yes, Chocobake.

Today I pulled the French Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Satin Frosting cards from the rooster box. Not for a party or any reason other than to connect with my history. To feel her presence in my kitchen she was never in. To think about her hands guiding mine as I layered on the crumb coating. Then working together to add the generous top layer of silky, dark chocolate icing.

I wonder how many times she made this cake from this recipe. Did she serve it for parties? Did she relish the deep chocolate flavor the…

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