Thank you for reading Between the Layers! Share with a friend, and if you’d like to support how I write about food intersecting with life, consider becoming a paid subscriber and get the extra Thursday newsletter and recipe. A Life Defined by Chocolate Bundt Cake - No. 207Darn Good Chocolate Cake, grocery lists, and recognizing defining moments
I WONDER WHAT WAS ON THE GROCERY LISTS of the victims of tragic gun violence at a downtown Louisville bank last week. It was a Monday and 24 hours after the busiest food shopping day of the week. Maybe a list in their pocket or handbag revealed what was for dinner or what they had promised to bring home. I seldom leave my list in the cart, but I do forget it on the seat of the car or at the bottom of my bag. If someone found my most recent one with broccoli, yogurt, chicken, bananas, and peanut butter cups, what would it tell them? Grocery lists say more than you think. My mother-in-law wrote grocery lists and stuck them in cookbooks as markers for new recipes to try. When I flip through her books today, it feels strangely personal. Ground beef, ketchup, silver polish, and onions reads to me as meatloaf and getting ready for company.
My life in chicken and chocolate cakeThe chicken on my list is for one of my favorite recipes - smashed chicken or its fancier name, Chicken Milanese. I’ve written about it online and in my book Skillet Love as it is a recipe I keep improving over time. It is a life’s work, I suppose, to arrive at a crispy chicken cutlet that’s as delicious the first night as it is the next day on a sandwich. No telling how many times I smashed boneless chicken breasts in a Ziplock bag as I fine-tuned that Parmesan-crusted recipe. It’s a modern twist on Southern fried chicken, really. While my mom loved planning big meals for family and friends, when it was just the five of us gathered around the family table, she fried chicken and served it with rice and made a gravy from the chicken drippings. To me, her chicken soaked in salted ice water, dredged in seasoned flour, fried, and drained on paper towels defines my childhood. Today my children season their chicken with single-origin spices. They soak it in yogurt and roast it on sheet pans until tender. When I was their age I was adventurous, too. I poached chicken and spread it with Dijon mustard and chopped tarragon or cooked chicken legs down into a confit. I delved into barbecued chicken one summer and came up with a vinegar sauce you could baste a split chicken with over low coals, and no matter how long it cooked, the sauce would never burn.
Defining this moment nowYesterday marked three weeks since the Covenant School shooting here in Nashville. It too, was on a Monday. As I hold off to finish this post hoping that my Tennessee state legislators will pass solid gun reform in their last week before recess, the minutes tick by. In the late 1960s, young people protested the Vietnam War and fought for civil rights. A social change was brewing. Now it feels like we are in that change mode again. The light has been shown on my state’s political gerrymandering, two ousted young legislators have gained a national platform and have been reinstated by their city councils, and the majority of Americans favor a federal ban on assault rifles. The younger generation is speaking up and demanding change. And this time, their mothers and fathers and grandparents are joining them. And you may wonder what this has to do with chocolate cake?
Not just chocolate cake, but Darn Good Chocolate CakeBack when savvy cooks had no problem whatsoever pulling a box of cake mix off the shelf, my Aunt Louise started baking a rich and dense chocolate Bundt cake. Louise was one of my mother’s older sisters. She raised her family in St. Petersburg, Florida, but when she and Uncle Jimmy moved back to Nashville when they were older, she became my mother’s confidante. Long distance phone calls were no longer an issue, and they spoke on the phone first thing every morning. Truthfully, Louise called this cake ‘’Damn Good Chocolate Cake,’’ and I can still see the twinkle in her eye after she said that word with her Tennessee twang…daaaammn. And when I wrote the Cake Mix Doctor, this was one of the handful of family recipes I included. A box of cake mix, sour cream, pudding mix, chocolate chips, Bundt pan, done. I renamed it Darn Good to make it a bit more family friendly. Through the years I’ve fiddled with Aunt Louise’s recipe, adding more chocolate chips and then smaller chips so they don’t sink, turning it into muffins with chocolate chunks, flavoring it with a bit of espresso powder, even trying to make a from-scratch version. And once cake mixes reduced in size, I tweaked the recipe to fit. It’s best warm with vanilla ice cream, and you can heat up slices in the microwave to melt the chips if you like. This cake has been the dirty little secret of many of my scratch baking friends, too. It’s that wink-wink, don’t ask sort of recipe that makes baking a cake accessible to everyone, and affordable, too. It doesn’t really care what people say or think. It’s just good. It defines that part of me looking for the quick and easy, and I just can’t let it go. Defining moments require our full attention.This recipe has its origins when our country was pregnant with change. Today feels reminiscent of those times. Back then, cities were burning, students were violently rioting, and there was social unrest because our boys were being shot in an unjustifiable war in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the establishment wasn’t doing anything about it. Today our children are being shot dead in classrooms and our lawmakers aren’t taking action. If this doesn’t make you mad, are you alive? Just this past weekend, there were more mass shooting deaths in Dadeville, Alabama, and again in Louisville. ‘’Let’s band together, let’s help each other,’’ pleaded Louisville’s mayor Craig Greenberg at a news conference. I can add to that list: Let’s keep pushing for a federal assault rifle ban, and better background checks, and red flag laws nationwide. Let’s peacefully protest and study the second amendment and see how it applies to how we live today. Let’s get mental health support to the people who need it. And let’s make sure that elected officials are accountable and capable of making difficult decisions. And then, let’s bake chocolate cake. - xo, Anne
This Thursday for paid subscribers, a conversation with Alex Prud’homme, the great-nephew of Julia and Paul Child, about what might have been on Julia’s grocery list and other delicious insights into the famous couple. We’re not done yet…This week, peaceful marches and protests for gun reform will take place in Washington, DC, and across the country. On Monday, March Fourth’s Save our Students rally was held in DC. I know some of you were there.
THE RECIPE: Darn Good Chocolate CakeEvery time I take a bite of this cake, I am reminded of Aunt Louise and my mother and how much they enjoyed sharing recipes and good times with each other. This recipe comes from my book, A New Take on Cake, and is the revamped recipe of one that originally appeared in the Cake Mix Doctor. Makes 12 servings Prep: 15 minutes Bake: 42 to 47 minutes
Notes: Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract or espresso powder to the batter if you like. Store this cake covered at room temperature for up to five days. Chocolate Ganache: Place 8 ounces (1 1/3 cups) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips or chopped chocolate in a mixing bowl. Pour 2/3 cup heavy cream into a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove the hot cream from the heat, and pour over the chocolate. Stir with a wooden spoon until the chocolate has melted. Stir in 1 tablespoon liqueur or whiskey of your choice or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Let cool at room temperature until spreadable, about 30 minutes. You’re on the free list for Anne Byrn: Between the Layers. If you’re liking what you’re reading, why don’t you become a paying subscriber for more recipes, stories, and content.
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