A Tale of Two Nanas or Chocolate Mocha Dot Cake

The truth is, inspiration for this blog (my passion for cooking and challenging myself with a new recipe), comes not just from my grandmother, but also my mother.  I suppose it doesn’t require a huge leap of logic to understand how both women influenced me – and quite probably influenced one another.  My mother has always been a skilled and unbelievable cook.  If you’ve ever been to Epiphany, you will know what I mean.  From her roast chicken dinners to her cookies to her meatballs to her spaghetti sauce, she created the kitchen in which I grew up… and for that matter, now cook.

This week my mother had a pretty significant birthday.  I know a lot of the Brennan women like to forget there is an age beyond 30, so I won’t disclose the number.  But it was a life changing day, when she got to officially become a Nana.

So, maybe there is no small coincidence that the recipe I ended up choosing might actually have been one of Nana’s recipes.  The original Nana was Rose Alba, my grandfather’s mother.  She lived at Mt. Pleasant Ave. with her sister and was a major contributor to the kitchen.  My grandmother continued making many of her recipes (come back here next week for Thanksgiving) and the tales of her personality are as vivid as if I actually met her – even though she died 15 years before I was born.

 Rose Alba as a young woman - early 20's I imagine

My mom in her early 20's.  I see a lot of Rose in my mother.  Maybe that's because my grandmother once made that comment to me.  Gram remarked that my mother even had her gestures.

 

 Rose Alba is on the right.  According to my Gram, she and her sister would crash the cellar parties at midnight... bringing the necessary tray of coffee and sandwiches so everyone could go home and get up for church the next day.

When I visited my grandmother’s house the first time after the hospital and before the funeral home, I searched through shelves and drawers for pictures.  Next to an envelope of vintage photos, I found a cookbook.  It was an old community cookbook, with names attached to some of the recipes and advertisements of Worcester businesses long gone on each of the course separators. It had fallen apart completely – maybe one or two bits of glue coated string remained of the binding, but all the pages were out of order – desserts blended with meats.  But the best part – the ABSOLUTE BEST PART – there were notes and recipes written all over it.

 

It reminded me at first of a cookbook I found when I worked at Beauport, on a high shelf of one of the dining rooms.  We talked a lot about the housekeeper and her cooking skills.  But that was all myth until one day I searched through the cookbook and saw notes… and realized that kitchen we walked through once had warmth and aromas and spills and drips that made the pages dirty as the ingredients were measured into a bowl.  It was like a sealed up treasure box of memories – memories of cooking, of meals consumed, of the conversations shared over the table.  I felt the exact same way when I found this recipe book and decided I needed to start cooking to find those memories hidden between the grease spots and flour residue on the pages.

But the thing is, I’m not sure who wrote those notes.  Some of the handwriting resembles the letters and birthday cards I have received over the years.  Some looks a little rounder.  I wonder if that was because a more youthful hand – or a hand holding a baby in the other arm – wrote it.  Or maybe… maybe those were Nana Rose’s scribbles.

Anyway, I took this recipe out of the book.  It wasn’t really one of the type-written recipes printed when the book was new.  It was written at the bottom of the page – apparently with a pen running out of ink.  So… there was some room for interpreting the directions.  And for that matter, what this cake is called. 

Choc Mocha Dot Cake

Pre-heat oven to 350˚
Grease two 8 in round layer cakes (I used a 13x9)

Sift together:
1 ¾ c flour
½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ c. cocoa
1 ½ c. sugar

Add:
½ c. vegetable shortening
⅓ c. buttermilk (or sour – really? - milk)
½ c. cold coffee

Beat for 2 minutes.   Pour into cake pans.  Bake for 30-35 minutes.

(The kitchen smelled of cinnamon for hours after sifting with the flour.  Better than scented candles.)

 

There is no frosting for this recipe.  I chose the basic chocolate butter frosting off the sugar container. 

This best part of this cake (after the candles and little people singing Happy Birthday to Rita), was the cinnamon.  Clearly we had a tough time eating it.