Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Cake

I don’t cook often, generally turning the stove on only to commemorate the weekends.  I think I’m a pretty good cook when it comes to simple things.  At least Randy, my husband, doesn’t complain when I put something in front of him.  Thanksgiving, however, is always a huge test of my cooking skill set.  Our family is pretty much traditionless, in that there aren’t special dishes that Grandma used to make and Thanksgiving won’t be the same if we don’t eat them.  For the past ten years my brother, Todd, and his wife, Wendy, have driven to Canton from Cincinnati to have Thanksgiving with my family and my mother.  Mom moved here ten years ago, under duress, and has never let either Todd or me forget that coming to Georgia was not her idea.  She is 89 and believes that she is entitled to a few complaints, moving to the allergy capital of the world being the major one.

When I was growing up, my Grandma Kramer was the cook.  She made all of the Thanksgiving pastry. Her recipes were in her head.  She used everything fresh from her garden and cooked in the old German way with pounds and pounds of butter.  None of us paid one bit of attention to how she made Lemon Meringue Pie or Pumpkin Pie or any other kind of pie.  Now we’re all sorry.  Someone should have written down what she was doing.  So much history is lost that way and so much good food.  So when it comes to making Thanksgiving pies, we now have to rely on pulling a Mrs. Smith out of the freezer.

We all gather at Mom’s apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.  Wendy makes the turkey and stuffing and we bring the rest. Wendy also makes this amazing horseradish/cranberry sauce that will bring tears to your eyes, it’s that good.  It makes excellent turkey even more excellent.  Randy and I bring appetizers, vegetables and that Southern Thanksgiving staple Sweet Potato Soufflé.  My Yankee family had never tasted Sweet Potato Soufflé, but now they can’t have Thanksgiving without it.

Randy each year makes a special “turkey” treat that everyone eats mostly to placate him.  Randy won’t admit it but after looking at some of his handiwork, I think he makes the treats for his own amusement.  He has baked cookies decorated like turkeys, a vegetable and that looked like a turkey, cupcakes he frosted like turkeys and this year he made rice krispie treat turkeys.  They were balls made of rice krispie treats, dipped in melted chocolate and decorated with candy corn to look like feathers and little faces made of candy.  He may have some color commentary to do on this turkeys.  Saying they even look like turkeys is being kind. Some of them imploded and most of their feathers fell off, but they taste great!  Randy was concerned that they didn’t look like the picture we got on-line.  He’s right.  They don’t.  But whoever made the ones in the picture probably had hundreds of bad ones before they got one that was picture worthy.  Randy’s are definitely picture worthy, but I don’t think we’ll be putting them in Bon Appetit.

I always try to make something new and exciting for dessert.  This year I saw a recipe in a magazine for Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Cake.  The picture was pretty, we love pumpkin, and who doesn’t like chocolate chips.  And, you got to cook with parchment paper!  Perfect!  My dear friend Tony and I used to attend this scrumptious cooking class in Ball Ground given by a fabulous chef, Laurie Grizzle.  Laurie would cook and explain everything she was doing and we would observe her and drink wine.  Then we’d eat what Laurie cooked and drink wine.  She made desserts using parchment paper.  I’ve never cooked with parchment paper, but I was sure from watching Laurie, and drinking wine, that it couldn’t be that tricky.   The parchment paper never became the problem baking my Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Cake.  The issue was that I should never have gotten the scissors and clipped the recipe in the first place.  I didn’t follow my No. 1 cooking rule: “If there are more than five ingredients, run the other direction.” I try to live by that rule.  I became so excited over the parchment paper that I forgot the No. 1 rule. 

I brought home from the store what I thought I needed and went to work.  I did fine until it said “all-purpose flour”.  OK.  I have flour but I don’t know if it’s all-purpose.  When I buy flour I take it out of the bag and put it into a plastic container.  Since I seldom bake, it’s been a while since I bought flour and I haven’t a clue what kind it is.  So, I figure, flour is flour.  Then it says baking soda.  The only baking soda I have is in the box that has been loitering in the refrigerator for about a year to keep the refrigerator fresh.  That might not be a good idea.  The cake only needs 1 teaspoon of baking soda, that’s not much, what can it hurt if I leave it out?  Next is baking powder.  I don’t have that either.  What does baking powder do anyway?  It’s only 1 teaspoon so I’m sure nobody will notice it missing.   Miniature chocolate chips – I can deal with that.  It only calls for 1 cup, but I bought an entire bag and if I don’t used them in this cake, I’ll eat them.  Besides, more chocolate chips can only make it better and I have to make up for the stuff I left out.  It looks yummy.  The dough tastes yummy and the parchment paper is perfect.

The cake is out of the oven and out of the pan.  It’s tall and golden like it was in the picture.  I became concerned that it would look like a pancake because I remembered after it was in the oven that the baking powder or the baking soda (one or the other) had something to do with rising.  I cooled it and tasted it.  It’s pretty good, solid, moist, pumpkiny, chocolate chippy, and nobody will ever guess that I left a few ingredients out.  It will be better with freshly whipped cream.  Grandma Kramer always made the whipped cream.  I sure hope Wendy knows how to make whipped cream.  Nobody in my family ever paid attention.