Chocolate Cake: My Story

A really wicked guest brought over a home made chocolate cake the other day. Full of sugar. Butter. Made from scratch. Thick, hardened frosting on top with moist-looking black chocolate cake underneath. How do I know all of these decadent details without eating it myself? I've been serving it to my husband each morning for breakfast with coffee. I definitely feel like I'm missing out, eating my cold, hard, crunchy Ezekial cereal while he eats his chocolate cake with his eyes closed.

So yesterday, I decided to make my own chocolate cake. Mine would be more chocolately, moist and heavenly than his--and it would be healthy! Ha! I used a recipe that someone gave me recently (I'm not telling whose--and I've received several in the last week!) and the recipe called for a lot of chocolate. Pure cocoa. Chocolate chips. Natural sweeteners. When I poured the batter in the cake pan, I licked the bowl clean. Delicious! I was going to flaunt my cake all week long. Ha! Ha!

It was disgusting. Dry. Wheaty. But I really wanted to pretend that it was good so I ate some. I poured some coffee and tried to swallow it down. Ew. Gross.

This morning, my husband sits down to his delicious-looking, moist, tall piece of cake and he's looking all smug and superior while I go to the pantry looking for my cold cereal. That cake I made last night was terrible....But I never told Jeff.

I ditched my efforts to get my cereal and instead, walked smugly over to last night's cake (it was so awful I didn't even bother to cover it). I cut a big chunk of it and tried to make it look like it was easy to cut through. Have you ever tried cutting a loaf of sourdough bread with the wrong knife? Then I poured a piping hot cup of coffee and sat down next to him. My first bite took about three minutes to chew. Oh well, I had my chocolate cake, too.

"Honey, you don't really like that cake, do you?" my husband says, and I can hear the twinkle in his eye.

"It's delicious," I said with my head down, trying to swallow this big, dry lump of gross cake in my throat. I could only get it down with another swig of coffee.

"Honey, don't eat it if it's not good!" he implores, his mouth full of his gooey, moist cake.

"It is good," I said, still looking down, trying to fool him.

"Throw it out! It's okay if that recipe didn't turn out."

He knew. There was no fooling him. I looked up and nodded at him, with a big wad of cake stuck in the side of my mouth. He jumped up, grabbed my cake pan and promptly dumped it in the trash. He didn't look at me smugly or make fun of me. He just sat back down and continued eating his cake.

UGHHHH! It is so hard for me to throw out food! It's easier to just eat it, little pieces at a time, knowing that the ingredients cost me a fortune. I felt much better after he dumped that cake, though. I didn't have to eat any more of it. "It's okay to throw out food. It's okay to throw out food," I have to repeat to myself. It's either in the trash or on my hips. I'm just glad that he didn't talk about it after he dumped it. I'll find that perfect, annoyingly healthy recipe.

For starters, for naturally sweetened recipes, I usually check out Nourishing Gourmet's site and look through all of her wonderful recipes. I have found some really delicious goodies over there, my virtual kitchen, my home away from home! It is where I found that great "Mounds" bar recipe.