Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

 There's nothing worse than baking a cake and having no one to feed.  Sally is quite adamant about this, and I'm not about to argue.  Remember the delicious cake we made last week?  Remember how quick and easy it was to make?  Well, it wasn't half as easy to eat an entire cake between the two of us.

Reduce: Sally and I spent last week slowly making our way through slices of cake until it was about halfway gone.  Now, I'm not going to say that we grew sick of it, because how can you get sick of cake?  But we did grow a little tired of eating it... and our hands were itching to make something new.
Reuse: So we decided to use the leftovers to make cakeballs, similar to the ones we made for Halloween last year.  Except this time, there was no recipe.  No guidelines to follow.  These cakeballs were done completely freehand, and turned out amazing.
Recycle: And of course by the end we were left with the same problem as the beginning: too much food and not enough people to feed.  So what did we do?  Shipped it out to friends across the land, in hopes that they would get as much use out of them as we did.

A One-bowl Cake

You've heard of a one-bowl recipe, right?  The kind where you just throw all the ingredients into a bowl and they magically mix themselves and turn into something delicious?  No?

 The internet is abound with one-bowl cookie recipes, one bowl brownies, and many others.  The idea is that it's easier to make something in one bowl - less mess, fewer dishes to wash, faster, simpler - because it's hard to go wrong when all you do is put the ingredients into the bowl and mix.  The problem Sally and I have found with these recipes is that sometimes they sacrifice taste on the way.  And what's the point of having a cake recipe that's easy but doesn't taste so good?

Good thing this cake doesn't disappoint in its deliciousness.  The texture is a bit odd, it's dense but not spongy, perfect for trifle or with ice cream.

Everyday Cake
barely adapted from Smitten Kitchen here
Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk*
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Dutch cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter and lightly flour a 9×5x3-inch loaf pan, or 8 inch round.
2. In a large bowl, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the egg and beat well, then the buttermilk and vanilla. Don’t worry if the batter looks a little uneven or starts to curdle.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt together right into your wet ingredients. Stir together with a spoon until well-blended but do not overmix.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes in a loaf pan, and 80 to 90 minutes in a round pan. Cool in pan on a rack for about 10 to 15 minutes, at which point you can cool it the rest of the way out of the pan.
*Buttermilk is real easy to make if you don't have any on hand: add a tablespoon of lemon juice to the bottom of a 1 cup measuring cup and fill with milk.  Stir, wait about two minutes, and you're ready to go!

The Great Cookie Exchange Part 2

The best part of the holiday season is giving gifts... now, who really believes that?  The best part of the holiday season is receiving gifts, and I'm sure everyone (except maybe Mother Theresa) would agree with Sally and I in this matter.  Something about unwrapping presents is just so exciting, even if it occurs long after the holiday season, as Sally and I can attest to.  We received our counterpart to the Cookie Exchange earlier this week, and have been diligently waiting for the sun to peer through the clouds to get a decent picture of all the decadent goodies we discovered.  Alas, the sun has thwarted our plans for three days, and Sally and I know if we waited much longer for this post there might not be anything left to take a picture of.  We couldn't resist munching on the sticky peanut brittle and smooth chocolate fudge while we waited... and waited... and it wasn't until we sat through a particularly gruesome snowstorm that we ended up completely consuming the treats in a fit of starvation.  Well.  Sort of.

Anyway, Sally and I would like to thank Kate for sending us the delicious treats and Steph of stephchows.blogspot.com for organizing this Cookie Exchange!  We had a lovely time, and hope to see more of you ladies in the future!