It has always been my ultimate dream to bake a chocolate cake because to me, it's like my own personal Mount Everest. If memory serves me right, almost all of my birthday cakes then were always made of chocolate cake with chocolate icing. It may be the birthday cake with candles on top or the roll or the slice, just seeing the cake seemed to cast my worries aside and live dangerously on the edge for just a moment.
I just started baking again. I learned the basics in High school but since that was eons ago, I re-learned the whole thing thru books and the Internet. My thanks to Ate Tina and Ate Cece, they have inspired me to bake (and cook) and that making mistakes is part of the process. And so, armed with my cocoa powder, flour, eggs, recipe list and tons of pure 100% guts, I decided to bake a chocolate cake. I felt so elated mixing the ingredients together and when I mixed the cocoa powder to the batter, I saw it turn a familiar color-chocolate brown. Yes, I'm half-way to the ultimate. To me, this is my point-of-no-return because somehow it has given me the confidence to venture to the unknown. As I pour the batter into the cake pan, I say a silent prayer hoping everything is okay. I put the pan in the oven and wait an excruciating 30-minutes to see the fruit of my labor.
A chocolate cake is never complete without the icing. I wish I know how to make a ganache but that is pushing my luck too far. Let me content myself first with the good, old chocolate frosting and maybe when I make it successfully, I can move on to the more sophisticated - ganache. As the mixer whirs into a silent hum and as I see peaks forming, I am transported back into Lola Bedad's kitchen at Christmas morning. I remember how everybody was busy preparing food for Lola's birthday lunch and my role was to either stay out of the kitchen or to lick the spoons and spatulas clean. Of course, my expert opinion for the taste was very much considered too (They really had no choice but to listen to me because I made sure they knew my side- and most of the time everything tasted good). Actually, my role was to be the kitchen's general help but I excelled more in being the general pest so the older ones would shove me into the dining room and assign me the inane task of folding napkins or setting up the table.
I think that the chocolate cake is just more than a dessert for me. It is a "bond" that I have with my siblings who, just like me, stops in their tracks with the sight of a chocolate cake, candy or anything covered in chocolate. I remember attending a Manikan family get-together and Tito Spanky whose blood sugar was being monitored closely was having a heartache because he could not partake the chocolate roll my sister brought as our contribution for the lunch. Tita Nining consoled him by saying, "Don't worry when I go to Hongkong next week I promise to bring you sugar-free chocolates that don't taste sugar-free." A faint smile crosses his lips yet his eyes are dead-locked to the chocolate roll. It was a very simple, very small chocolate roll (finances were pretty tight) and when it was placed on the dessert table beside the towering cakes with intricate designs and icing, my sister Bing told Toto, "Doesn't the roll look pitiful?" My brother then tells her, "It's okay. What is important is that we brought something." Five minutes into the luncheon, Toto comes back and tells us, "If you plan to eat the chocolate roll, you'd better get some now because there are only three slices left." As I scan the room, everybody seemed to have a slice of the chocolate roll. Everybody that is related to me- my uncles, my aunts, my cousins, my nephews and nieces, my siblings. I look at the dessert table and the beautiful towering cakes were still standing in all its glory- untouched. Beside it is the simple, plain chocolate roll whose underplate is now showing because there is only two slices left. No, it did not look pitiful because ten minutes into the luncheon- everything was gone. This chocolate madness may be genetic- at least I know that the Manikans go gaga over anything with chocolate. Who knows? Maybe I might discover the roots of the chocolate mystery.
As I look at my finished product, I realize the beauty of the chocolate cake. It's simplicity and harmony of flavors incite the all the senses- it smells divine, it tastes divine, it looks divine. What more is there to say?!
