I am holed up here in the apartment with the fans going, because someone--I don’t remember who--but someone who sounded authoritative on the radio—said that as long as the temperature does not exceed 86 degrees, the moving air created by a fan will cool you just as well as an air conditioner. And that is good, because our air conditioners are broken, and I am still unemployed. What I am ostensibly doing, isolated and insulated by white noise, is furiously looking for a job, since these days, one will find more jobs by sitting in front of a computer than one will ever find pounding the pavement.
However, what I am actually doing is avoiding the heat, avoiding spending money I don’t have, and avoiding the computer, while I hone my attention deficit—or “distractedness,” as Mark affectionately calls it—by finding all kinds of odd and sundry projects around the house. Practicing piano, perfecting my pushups, polishing pagan paeans. Well, no, the last one was just for the alliteration.
I have also been cooking. Too much the last couple of days, I am afraid. Yesterday was almost entirely devoted to a chocolate chiffon cake, which neither Mark nor I should eat. I woke up bright and early the other morning and decided to make it because, as I rationalized to myself, there were too many egg whites in the freezer, and they were getting too old. Which was true, but I probably should have just tossed them. Especially since not wasting those egg whites entailed going to the supermarket and buying more ingredients that I did not have in the house. Since I did not want to spend money on public transportation by going further than my local supermarket, I ended up paying a premium for what my supermarket considers an exotic ingredient: cream of tartar. It cost seven dollars for a supply that will probably last me the rest of my life. Had I bought it online, I could have bought enough for four lifetimes for the same price.
Then there was the question of the egg whites in the freezer. How many eggs, exactly, did that represent? I was following the recipe on page 710 of the latest edition of The Joy of Cooking, and I am fully cognizant that baking does not brook the kind of latitude that I often take with cooking. If I wanted the cake to come out, I would have to follow the recipe to the letter. The recipe called for five egg yolks, and eight egg whites, so I logically guesstimated that the amount in the freezer equaled approximately three whites.
As I started beating up my room temperature egg whites, with the required cream of tartar, I noticed that the meringue was bulking up quite a lot, but it had been a long time since I’d made a chiffon cake, so I decided to believe it was supposed to do that. When I folded all the ingredients together, the batter had grown so massive that I had to ask Mark to help me wrestle it into the tube pan.
“Maybe this should go into two pans?” Mark suggested.
“It’s fine,” said I.
An hour later, with the batter bubbling, rising, and taking over the oven like a monster from a cheap horror film, I conceded that Mark was correct.
Considering the mess I was going to have clean up, I really wanted to save something from this endeavor. So when I wrestled the cake pan out of the oven, cutting away the stalactites of batter that now attached it firmly to the rack, door, and sides, I realized that the only way to save face was to cut away a portion of it that might be construed to be a cake shape, and cover it with frosting. After all, I reasoned, I did have confectioner’s sugar, butter and some chocolate leftover from Christmas that really ought to be used up. And there must be some jam in the back of the fridge that would serve as a filling.
So, what started out as a “save the food” mission, which shouldn’t have taken longer than an hour, ended up being a cooking and cleaning adventure of over five hours. Still, both Mark and our friend Roy confirmed that the results were tasty.
“It’s a chocolate chiffon behemoth,” I explained to Roy, as he was forking up a mouthful.
“May I make an editorial suggestion?” he said. “Maybe you want to call it a chocolate behemoth instead. If you call it a chocolate chiffon behemoth, it sounds like the behemoth is wearing a tutu.”
“And that is exactly the way I want it to sound,” said I.
Chocolate Chiffon Behemoth with Chocolate Butter Cream frosting and Currant Jelly Filling
For the Cake
- Follow the recipe for Chocolate Chiffon Cake on page 710 of the 75th Anniversary Edition of The Joy of Cooking.
- Instead of the eight egg whites required, however, use ten or eleven.
- Make sure that when you whip up egg whites with the cream of tartar and the sugar, you use a really big bowl, and you keep beating until the meringue is really glossy and forms stiff peaks. It takes a while, if you aren’t lucky enough to have one of those fabulous Kitchen Aide standing mixers, and I am not.
- Fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Or vice versa--just make sure that you’re doing the folding in your biggest bowl.
- Pour the batter into the ungreased springform tube pan, and for god’s sake, put the whole thing on a really big cookie sheet, thereby protecting yourself from prolonged contact with Easy-Off a few hours hence.
- Bake. About fifteen minutes longer than the recipe calls for. By all means, do the toothpick test in the thickest part of the beast before you take it out of the oven, and do not be dismayed by the excess. You will be able to excise the cake pan without a jaws of life.
- Remove from the oven and cool. Cut away the excess cake to free the pan. You will need a knife to cut, and a spatula to wiggle around under the cake pan to separate it from the cookie sheet.
- Maybe use a very old cookie sheet that you won’t mind throwing out if it gets too messed up.
- Remove the cake from the pan, by carefully releasing the spring, and easing the sides away from the cake. Turn it over to remove the bottom/top.
- Cut the cake in half horizontally, so it can be filled.
Butter Cream Frosting
2 oz unsweetened chocolate (2 squares), room temperature
4 oz unsweetened butter (half a stick), room temperature
10 to 12 oz of confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 to 4 TBSP of half and half
- Put the chocolate into a metal bowl, and fit that bowl into a saucepan with water in the bottom. Ideally, you’ve got a double boiler, but you can make do. Put the pan over a low heat and let the chocolate melt at a lazy pace.
- Remove from the heat and let it stand for five minutes, then add the butter.
- Use the electric mixer to blend the chocolate and the butter. Make sure you mix them very well.
- Beat in vanilla.
- Add sugar, gradually. After each addition, beat until smooth. If it gets too lumpy or stiff, add some of the half and half.
- Continue adding and mixing until you have a glossy, stiff but not too stiff chocolate substance, that looks exactly like canned frosting, but tastes much, much better.
Currant Jelly Filling
- Open a jar of currant jelly. Homemade is best, although I won’t be having any more of that anytime soon, since the currant bushes all died from some sort of blight.
- Spread a generous amount of the jelly on the bottom half of the cake. Fit the top back on, and let the jelly act as glue.
Very Important, the Behemoth Decorations
I hope you didn’t throw out (or eat) all of the leftover bits of cake. Now is the time to crumble and crush them into delicious chocolate crumbs.
Assemblage
- You’ve got your currant filled cake. Make sure it’s on a tray or something that you can refrigerate for a while so that the whole thing can “marry” before you serve it.
- Spread the chocolate frosting all over the cake. Go ahead, be generous, be rustic; remember, this is a behemoth.
- Strew crumbled chocolate crumbs all over the top and sides of the cake.
- Cool for at least an hour before serving.
Yum.
Note: Allow time to clean the oven, and all the other bits of the kitchen that were involved in this process.
