All articles filed in Desserts

I think William Blake nailed it when he wrote “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom… You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.” Blake was the sort of man who would have liked Maxwell’s Hockey Puck Birthday Cake. It’s the kind of dessert you eat on the road of excess and you will definitely know when you have eaten too much. I can see Blake now, sharing it with Mrs. Blake on those occasions when they relaxed naked in their back yard after a hard day of poetry writing and print pressing. But I digress. I decided to create a new dessert for my stepson Maxwell’s fifteenth birthday. As a wicked stepmother, I firmly believed that Maxwell was in serious need of wisdom. His father and I didn’t know any ancient wisdom initiation rituals. (You can’t find a decent mountain or eagle feather in Philadelphia anyway.) We had already done the therapist thing but that only meant that the hapless lad would suffer from our mistakes instead of our parents’ mistakes. Besides, the only really useful tip my mother ever gave me was never to slap a man who chews tobacco. (I think Max already knew that.) I was going to write that this is the point where I thought of William Blake, the road of excess, and the Hockey Puck cake. I sadly admit it’s not true. I merely decided to indulge Maxwell’s voracious sweet tooth with a dessert that combined several of his favorite desserts into one. Let’s see-there was his mother’s brownies (high on my list too), his grandmother’s Jello cake, (technically stained glass cake) for the graham cracker crust. (Jello is a poor excuse for a dessert.) Max loved chocolate in its many forms including fudge and toffee (but no nuts because Max didn’t like them. ) I included marshmallow crème for something white. My mother shrieked when I told her my plan, “You’re gonna give that boy sugar diabeetees!” “I hope not,” I worried. At least not until he’s on his own medical insurance. I made the first Hockey Puck (recipe follows) cake and my husband and I each had a sliver. Maxwell and a friend each downed two large wedges after scarfing down spaghetti and meatballs. (Which they washed down with Jolt Cola  laced with saccharin.) My husband and I laid prostrate on the sofa helpless to stop them, listening to our hearts beat like jack hammers. We did achieve a measure of wisdom that night. The teenage boys? Not so much.  20+ years later,  I am happy to say that Max has apparently learned restraint because he does not have diabetes.  Which is good for him because he has two little boys and children try to travel the road of excess as often as it takes to make their parents crazy. And why is the cake called Hockey Puck? When I first made it, my husband took one look and remarked that it looked like a hockey puck with a thyroid condition.

Maxwell’s Hockey Puck Birthday Cake

• One two-layer fudge cake (recipe follows)
• One box graham crackers
• One 14 oz jar marshmallow crème
• Fudge sauce (recipe follows) or 10 oz jar
• One recipe chocolate ganache (Recipe follows)
• Toffee (recipe follows) or 1 lb Heath Bars chopped

I started with a recipe for a fudge brownie cake. You can use a mix, but Max got a cake made from scratch. Here’s a good recipe that has the lightness of a chiffon cake with that brownie flavor Fudge Cake

• 3 cups sugar
• 3/4-cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 2/3 cups flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1-tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups milk
• 1 1/8 cups cocoa powder

Butter and flour three 9-inch cake pans and line them with waxed paper. The waxed paper is important because the cake sticks to the pan. Mix the sugar and oil and slowly stir in the cocoa. Blend in the eggs with a mixer. Blend in the milk and vanilla into this mixture. Sift the dry ingredients into a separate bowl and add alternately with the milk to the sugar-oil-egg mixture while beating at a slow speed. Go slowly and make sure you are incorporating all the ingredients. Remember to scrape the sides and the button of the mixing bowl. Pour into the cake pans and bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the cakes from the pans and let them cool. Peel off the waxed paper. You can freeze one layer because you will only use two. Toffee

• 2 cups butter
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Combine butter and sugar in a heavy sauce pan. Clip a candy thermometer to the pan. Cook over medium flame stirring occasionally, until the mixture starts to boil. Remove from stove when the temperature reached 285°F and stir in the baking soda and vanilla. Pour onto a shallow pan lined with waxed paper and sprinkle the chocolate chips on the top. No need to melt them beforehand; they will melt on the hot toffee. Spread them over the entire surface and sprinkle with the nuts, if you are not making Hockey Puck for Max. Break into pieces when cool. Store in tightly covered container. TIP: add a teaspoon of molasses if you like brown sugar in your toffee. I never buy brown sugar; I keep molasses and add a bit of it to white sugar instead. A bit of molasses is also good in the fudge sauce (recipe below). Chocolate Ganache 

• 16 oz chocolate chips
• 1 ½ cup heavy cream
• 2/3 cup butter
• 1 tsp vanilla

Pour the cream into a microwave safe bowl and heat for one minute on high. Add the chips and stir. If the chips do not melt, heat in 30 second intervals on high until both ingredients are incorporated. Stir in vanilla and let cool. If the ganache gets too hard to spread, heat it in the microwave until spreadable. Chocolate Fudge Sauce

• 2 c. sugar
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1 stick butter

Combine ingredients in a saucepan and heat slowly until it starts to boil. Boil mixture for one minute and remove from stove. Let it cool for about 5 minutes before pouring it over the cake. If it hardens, heat in microwave.

Assembling Your Hockey Puck