And for Father’s Day —

I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear I made a cake! Since my Dad has a sweet tooth, this was a no-brainer thing to do.

I was in a mood to experiment, so I made this possibly somewhat odd cake:

Chocolate Mayonnaise Layer Cake

I admit I also made this because I accidentally opened a jar of mayonnaise when I already had one open. They were both big jars and it takes me a loooong time to go through a jar of mayonnaise, so this cake was a way to speed up the process.

The cake wasn’t at all bad. Decent chocolately taste and a nice moist crumb. I present it here in case you also find yourself needing to find room for two open jars of mayonnaise in the fridge. Or, for that matter, out of butter, since that plus a couple eggs is what the mayonnaise is replacing.

2 oz semisweet chocolate
2/3 C cocoa
1 3/4 C boiling water
2 3/4 C all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 C dark brown sugar (or actually I used light brown, not like it makes any difference)
1 C sugar
1 1/3 C mayonnaise (I would not expect results to be as good using low-fat or fat-free; I used Helman’s regular mayonnaise)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Frosting of your choice — since this was my Dad, I used a chocolate peanut butter frosting that I figured he would like, and since it was Father’s Day, I dusted stars over the frosted cake with gold dust. But use whatever you like.

So, the cake:

Combine the chocolate and cocoa and pour over the boiling water; whisk until smooth.

Combine dry ingredients.

Beat together the sugars and mayonnaise — beat for 3 minutes. Then beat in the eggs one at a time. Then add the dry ingredients 1/4 at a time, alternately with thirds of the chocolate mixture.

Line three eight-inch cake pans with parchment paper. Or I used 2 nine-inch cake pans plus one giant cupcake dish.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-32 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Let cakes cool ten minutes, turn out onto racks, and cool completely. Assemble, frost with whatever frosting you decided to use. In case you also like peanut butter, here is a good chocolate-peanut-butter frosting, good for a father with a sweet tooth:

8 oz semisweet chocolate
3/4 C peanut butter
1 C heavy cream
1 C powdered sugar

Heat the cream and pour over the chocolate and peanut butter; whisk until smooth. Whisk in the powdered sugar, more or less a cup or to taste. Frost cake; chill to set frosting; use your handy star decal to dust gold dust stars over cake, and serve to general acclaim.

Also! In case you’re keeping track of my progress in other realms, possibly more relevant to you as readers . . . I have now cut SIXTY SEVEN pages from my WIP, dropping its current length back to a mere 154 pages. Ouch!

But! A) I like the 154 pages I have now quite a lot better than I liked the 221 I had before , and B) Some of the cut pages are simply going to move to a new home in a later chapter, so that cut wasn’t as extreme as it seems.