big cadillac dreamer

November 17th.  A damp, gray, chill afternoon; first day so far this year that it actually feels like it’s getting on to winter.

Time to bake a cake.

I don’t do much baking anymore. There are so many good bakeries around, why bother.
But today I feel the urge.

A quick look through my most obliging cookbooks (meaning that most are dust-covered or falling apart or in hard-to-reach places) turns fruitless—too many pies and cooked-fruit desserts, which I love but am not in the mood for. So I haul out my personal recipe file—a manila folder

(does anyone say “manila” anymore?)

stuffed with stained and fragile recipes, loosely organized in paper-clipped bundles.  It is a treasure, this folder, full of a life-times’ worth of curated works.

I find the one for chocolate cake.

It’s written by my hand, in red pen, on a small sheet of stationary. The sheet has a logo at the top that says Stop and Go Transmissions, and a cartoon-looking picture of a 1970's traffic light. Within the red light at top is the word "stop," and written inside the green light is "go." “Transmissions are our business—our only business. Free Pickup—Free Towing—Free Delivery,” is the tag line. It was a business my father owned—seems it always comes back to my father.

In 1979 when my father was about 55 years old, with a couple of kids still at home (5 were already grown-up), he bought a Stop & Go Transmissions franchise. The timeline is a little murky because he changed businesses so often. We all thought he was nuts—he knew nothing about cars; he was a restaurant & lounge kind of guy, a "Dewar's & water" man, as my brother Joe described him once. In the 2005 eulogy to my father, Joe
wrote

Lover of the long shot
big Cadillac dreamer
double-breasted suit wearer
money loaner
story teller
risk taker
hell of a guy...

But my father insisted that this business would provide the big pay-out--next stop: easy-street.

The business was pretty successful for a while, but he was restless—he tired of it after five years, and moved on to buy the Elbow Room Lounge. That’s where I bartended for a while, and met Half-Man and Texaco Jack (but that’s another story).
 
Some time not long after this era, I acquired the recipe for this chocolate cake. I have no idea where the recipe came from and no recollection of writing it down. But I’ve made it a thousand times and it’s always good; pretty easy, too.

I bet you have all the ingredients on hand right now to make it. Who doesn’t have cocoa powder (there’s probably a can of it kicking around somewhere in that pantry), or eggs, baking soda, sugar, salt, flour, vanilla?

My sister Susan, a great cook, makes her own vanilla extract and gave me some as a birthday present. Standing inside the little medicine bottle is a real vanilla bean.

I wanted to use-up lots of pantry items before replenishing my stocks for Thanksgiving cooking.  So I added in chopped hazelnuts, walnuts and dried Medjool dates—just a handful of each, even though the cake could have used more. I didn’t adjust the proportions of any of the other ingredients and the cake was great.

I made two, one for home and one to take to my daughter in New York.  She's a starving young actress—which is yet another story.

Stop & Go Chocolate Cake
1 well-buttered 9" or 10" bundt pan (adjust cooking time accordingly)

In a saucepan on the stove top bring to boil
1 stick of butter
1 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 TBSP unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Ghirardelli's)

In a mixing bowl combine
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
(and any dry ingredients in your pantry you'd like to add)

Combine the two mixtures and beat with electric mixer until well mixed.

Then add
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk or sour cream (I didn't have either so I used plain yogurt)
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat until smooth.

350 degrees for 50 minutes to 1 hour (yum).