[My] World’s Best Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting

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An amazingly moist rich chocolate cake with light-as-air chocolate frosting.  This is the ultimate chocolate layer cake.

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I consider my birthday to be my personal New Year and celebrate accordingly.  No overcrowded soirees and schwanky duds for this chicken; I prefer good company, introspection, bubbles, and my du jour favorite foods.  This year, I had a hankering for Cuban sandwiches and chocolate cake.  Cubans are pretty straight-forward (except that I used chicken … I just cannot help myself with the experimenting… it was okay; pork’s better).  Cake, on the other hand … cake takes thought.  Given that I’ve grown up with the queens of chocolate cakedom (Nonnie and Mom), this couldn’t be any ordinary cake… it had to exceed expectations.  I was having a needs-expectations-exceeded birthday so the pressure was real.  Birthday drama is my jam. Even made up cake drama.

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Berry Jam Crumble Bar Cookies

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A buttery short crust with hints of cinnamon and the hearty flavor of toasted oats cradling an ooey tart-sweet center of jam.  Perfect for picnics, lunchboxes or a random Monday afternoon.

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The first time I made these cookies was for a winery tour of Virginia that was a gift for my mother.  Since she’s not a huge chocolate fan (yes, please read my last post re: her world-famous chocolate cake … go figure … I digress) and needed to be portable (read sturdy), I went hunting for a bar cookie recipe.  This is an amalgamation of several I came across so apologies for not sharing the lineage.  I proudly dub this’n a mutt cookie.  And we all know mutts are the best…. no pomp or pretense… just good stuff.

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Strawberry Pa Looza!

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Angel food cake with roasted strawberries

Recipes for everything strawberry!  Homemade ice cream and fudge sauce, roasted strawberries for the perfect angel food cake, strawberry limeade, and strawberries and cream biscuits.  Stretchy pants optional but recommended.

Every Spring I look forward to two things of the verdant variety.  First is planting my pot garden (that still amuses me; for the easily scandalized among us, I am referring to my vegetable container garden) and the second, more reliable, is strawberry season.  I start trolling the pick-your-own farm websites at the beginning of May and then give a week or two to clear out the scary die-hard pickers (those folks that come in with their own containers, jam and jelly on their minds, and a sense of territory that would put a pit bull to shame).

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And here we go … Compost Cookies

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I told the boys I was starting this blog to create a family “recipe book” so that if I were to die in a firey ball tomorrow, at least there would be good food at the wake (hey, they’re 8 and 9 … they love that sort of talk).  They immediately went cross-eyed when I told them I would start with Pasta Fazool (pasta e fagiola for the purist).  “No! No!  If you die in a fiery ball, I want compost cookies!”  “Me, too! Me, too!”  I’m pretty sure I heard a mumbled “who likes beans anyway?” but I ignored that sacrilege and pulled out the mixer.

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