A piece of cake

Alex is now 6. There aren't enough Legos in the world to please him, birthday cards that play the "Star Wars" theme delight him endlessly, and he wanted to celebrate with a plain chocolate cake.

Six years old and adept at torturing his mother.

Basic chocolate cake is my Achilles heel; I seem to be incapable of making it. I have many recipes for more sophisticated versions: flourless, triple-fudge, chocolate-raspberry, peppermint, Black Russian. But a good, plain chocolate cake eludes me. Past efforts tended to come out dry and flavorless. I was not going to serve a dry flavorless cake for my son's birthday. I begged for help.

An old friend promptly came through with a "super dupa easy" recipe she recommended to Will several years ago and that has been lurking in a saved e-mail folder since. Like most cake recipes, it involves dumping a bunch of ingredients into a bowl, mixing them well, pouring the batter into pans and baking. It couldn't be easier and came highly recommended so  I decided to go with it. (Exact recipe to follow at the end.)

This super dupa easy cake begins with combining sugar, flour, baking soda, salt and a lot of cocoa powder in a bowl. Technically, the dry and liquid ingredients are not mixed separately, but out of habit I stirred the dry gently before moving on.

I started to measure out the liquid ingredients and did a double take. I had written down 2 tablespoons of vanilla, which seemed a ridiculously large amount. Quick run to the computer to check the e-mail... ah yes, the 2 tablespoons of vinegar and 1 tablespoon vanilla were next to each other in the ingredient list and in my haste I had scribbled them down wrong. Still, 1 tablespoon of vanilla seemed a lot and I cut it back to 2 teaspoons.

I poured the liquid into the flour mixture and mixed until it was smooth. Then into a pair of cake pans and baked for 45 minutes. The cakes seemed a little underdone on the toothpick test, so I gave them another five minutes. The cake tops looked beautiful and the layers shook out of the pans nicely without any breakage.

I wasn't in the mood to make buttercream, so I wimped out and used store-bought frosting. Alex picked out the kind with colored candy dots to sprinkle on top.

THE VERDICT: Alex was happy. Will thought the cake was very good. Keith didn't like it so much, but I'm not sure he's a cake person. I can say it was easily the best basic chocolate cake I've ever made -- it was moist and had some good flavor. However, I thought it was a little more dense than I like. It was good, but I think I'm still looking for the perfect recipe.

Super Dupa Easy Chocolate Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Thoroughly mix:
2 c. sugar
3 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
4 heaping Tbsp. cocoa powder
1 c. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla
2 c. water

Bake 45 minutes.