Hot Chocolate Cake

I could make up a whole story about how this is an old family recipe dating back generations, replete with stories about how as a child, my mother would make this for us on those special days or just to cheer us up. And not that my mom doesn't rock as far as moms go (and she's reading this so I have to say that but really, she did/does rock in many ways), but I can never remember her baking just for the sake of baking. Holidays, yes. Tuesdays, not so much. She was always the mom who got us the bakery cakes for our birthday which we thought totally rocked especially since you could get a free cookie when you went in to order the cake. I can still remember going to the little bakery in Dumas--not Golden Spread but the other one that was run by a little old lady. Crap. Why can I not remember her name? Ida Belle? That sounds about right. I remember she had two names and was over near the TG&Y in a little house.

But I digress. The real story isn't glamorous or exciting or memory invoking. I clipped the recipe for Hot Chocolate Cake from the February 2005 Real Simple. I made it as a single layer cake and in ramekins. I overcooked it as a single layer cake--I think it's one that would be better a bit gooey. And I used my kitchen blow torch on the marshmallows because that was way more fun than the broiler.

I ended up not making any of the desserts I was originally considering and just went with a really simple homemade chocolate cake. And because it was just one layer, we both had two slices because we decided that would be the same as eating one piece of a layer cake. We're nothing if not rational.