veni,vidi,vici

A couple of months ago L found out about the chocolate cake I made for the hiking group pot luck (see Cake As Plumage), which wooed her sister R into my arms. Since then she’s been after me to have a “throw down,” her favorite chocolate cake against mine. After hemming and hawing I picked up the gauntlet and last weekend at a family (hers not mine) cookout we took our paces.

The daytime temperatures in Santa Fe have been into the nineties – not exactly baking weather – so I got up Sunday morning at 5:30, made a pot of coffee and enjoyed the cool and quiet and baked a “Chocolaty Fudge Cake” from Marcel Desaulnier’s cookbook, I’m Dreaming Of A Chocolate Christmas; the cake of pot luck legend. As various concoctions got mixed and simmered and baked I thought of the movie Babette’s Feast, wherein the French and Catholic and très sexy housekeeper Babette prepares a feast for and thoroughly blows the socks off her Danish and Protestant and uptight employers and guests… some great scenes in there. Step by step my cake came together.

We took measures to keep the recipes and provenance of the cakes a secret from the panel of judges, all seventeen of us attending the cookout, minus L and me. The cakes sat on display and after dinner we sliced them and passed the plates. Umm’s, ooo’s, ahh’s and assorted kibitzing went around and everyone was polite, “… both cakes are delicious,” “…if either of these cakes were the only cake I was eating it would be the best I’ve ever had…”

And then we got down to business and took a vote. One cake was noticeably lighter in color than the other so L wrote “light / dark” on many little slips of paper. Which is your favorite? A few of the judges were non-committal and voted for both. Hmmm… could they simply not pick a favorite… or were they afraid of repercussions? No matter, when all votes were tallied alas, my cake didn’t quite vici. The dark one, L’s Chocolate Kahlúa Pound cake won. Congratulations L!

Competition improves the breed and I’m thinking about a few tweaks to my cake. The chocolate cake throw down was a lot of fun and I think a few of the judges are still ooo-ing and ahh-ing. This after all is what great chocolate cake is about.

Gordon Bunker