The Cake That Solves Every Problem

I grew up with a mother who made a lot of cake: Chocolate mousse, cheesecake, any kind of birthday cake. All from scratch, and all delicious.

Before she went back to work full time, my mother’s operating principle seemed to be: When in doubt, bake cake. As a teenager, I specialized in baking brownies and chocolate chip cookies. I loved the taste of the gooey raw batter, and the damage you did by eating too many brownies or cookies was easier to hide than the damage you did by eating half a cake. After I married and had my own kids, I began to bake a layered white birthday cake with buttercream frosting and a raspberry jam filling, a recipe I learned from a man who called himself “Mr. Salt and Mr. Butter.”

Everyone loved that white birthday cake; the recipe called for, among other things, three-and-a-half sticks of butter and a pound of confectioner’s sugar. The only problem was I always had to make an extra batch of buttercream frosting because I ate so much frosting while waiting for the cake to cool.

My children are grown now and I don’t make cake as often as I would like. But, one fine spring day, my friends Debbie, Carrie and I decided to make dinner for our husbands on a Friday night. (I realize how hidebound this sounds.) We divvied up what we would make: Carrie would make chicken with lemon and some kind of charcuterie board; she would also host. Debbie would make roasted vegetables and a green salad with salad dressing inspired by the Italian restaurant Via Carota. I would make roasted shrimp with horseradish sauce and a ricotta honey swirl. For the grand finale, Debbie and I would bake Yossy Arrefi’s Easy Chocolate Cake with chocolate buttercream frosting.

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Let me tell you about this easy chocolate cake. First, though time consuming, it is easy. Second, it is extraordinary. The cake relies on neutral oil and sour cream for moisture and fat, not butter (though there’s plenty of butter in the buttercream frosting). The recipe author points out that the layers “bake up nice and flat so you don’t have to bother with trimming.”

All true. The cake comes out of the pan looking perfect. As for taste, the recipe calls for two and a quarter cups of granulated sugar and a full cup of hot coffee to be added to the batter, ensuring you will feel high as a kite after eating the first slice. Will I again sound hidebound if I write that men love this cake? Perhaps. No matter how you slice it, this cake belongs in the same category as Marry Me Chicken. Whoever you make it for will want to marry you, if they haven’t tried to seduce you already.

The other good news about this cake? It makes for a nice calling card. In April, my sister-in-law hosted a bridal shower for her nephew’s future wife. Mine was a last-minute invite. We weren’t invited to the wedding, and I was invited to the shower a week before it happened. (I should add here that I barely know the bride and only see the groom once or twice a year.) This was a shower that called for no gifts, but I come from a mother-who-made-cake, so how could I go empty-handed?

I decided to make Easy Chocolate Cake. I knew almost no one at the shower except my sister-in-law, her two sisters and the bride (kind of), but the cake gave me a sense of purpose and belonging. Plus, it looked great and tasted divine. Later, the groom’s mother texted: Thanks for that out of the world cake. I’m still tasting it in my dreams.

A few weeks later, I made the cake for Mother's Day weekend, when we visited with some of the major women in my life: My mother, mother-in-law, sister- in-law, and husband’s aunt. Again, the cake delivered. How could it not? It’s filled with butter, sugar and everything delicious. This is a cake that solves pretty much everything. It helps you make friends and influence people. It allows you to feel loved, adored, welcomed, and tolerated. It is old school and the OG.

Most important: Easy Chocolate Cake lets you walk into a party or special event, put the cake down on the table, announce "cake"; and in that moment, everyone is happy. In this chaotic, high-tech world, easy access to old school happiness is no small thing.