(Inspired by “Black Dirt,” p. 38, Cornfields to Codfish)
I remember Mom making devil’s food chocolate cake for birthday celebrations as well as an any-day dessert. She used a recipe out of her standard household cookbook. I wasn’t able to get permission to reprint that recipe, but after digging around in my stash, I discovered a “recipe” for Devils Food Cake in Grandma Mills’s handwriting.
It was just a list of ingredients, no directions. Finding this card reminded me of how solitary life on the farm was for Grandma Mills when she was raising her family and farming with Grandpa. She and Grandpa did not go out to dinner with friends on Saturday nights, nor did they go to church on Sundays. She did not have a best friend or set of neighbors she regularly visited. The women’s voices that I remember in Grandma’s kitchen came from the AM radio show The Open Line. This program was on WMT, a Northeast Iowa radio station, and Grandma listened to women call in to talk about and read off their recipes. This was a one-sided social outlet for Grandma.
I can envision Grandma quickly jotting down this list of ingredients as they were broadcast by another farm woman.
The instructions weren’t important; they were known: Mix all ingredients together, pour into a greased 9”x13” pan, bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Frost or serve unfrosted with vanilla ice cream.
In a large mixing bowl, I added one ingredient at a time and hand-whisked it into the batter. I upgraded the cocoa to Dutch process and the vanilla to Mexican, 35% alcohol; then I baked it for exactly 30 minutes.
As for the topping, I discovered that mint chocolate chip ice cream made by the Connelly brothers on their dairy farm in Temple, New Hampshire, works just as well as the vanilla ice cream did from the Schwan’s man years ago.
“. . . I knocked down a weedy mess so I could plant a red climbing rosebush against the barn’s old stone wall. Surrounded by maple trees that were fully leafed out and bordered by the fence, this 20 x 20-foot spot had the makings of a secret garden. My shovel slid through that dirt as if the ground were a devil’s food chocolate cake . . .” (p. 40, Cornfields to Codfish)