Baking a cake, farm style
Baking
a cake on the farm is always an adventure. As the culmination of
Mark appreciation week, I decided on a rich chocolate cake that called
for seven eggs...only to look in the fridge and see a mere four
eggs! So I put on my boots and coat and headed outside in search
of three more.
Usually, our nine hens
give us more eggs than we can eat, but this abnormal cold spell has
frozen the chicken
tractors in place and put our hens in a bad mood. Some days
this month, we've only gotten one egg between them. Would we get
lucky today?
I opened the nest box
door in the Plymouth Rock's tractor --- one egg. The young Golden
Comets are always good for at least an egg, so I wasn't concerned there
--- sure enough, one egg. But the last tractor has Golden Comets
who are finishing up their fourth year of life and are starting to slow
down in their laying. I opened the dryer
door and peeked in the last nest box...and breathed a sigh of
relief. One last egg!
Back
inside, I melted and beat and mixed. It was the first day this
year that had reached above freezing (even if only by a degree) and the
cats were feeling their oats. Every time the sun came out from
behind a cloud, both cats begged to be let out. Five minutes
later, the clouds closed and two chilly cats wanted in. My
routine was a bit like this --- turn on the microwave, let in a cat,
stir in the butter, let out a cat, measure the flour, let in a
cat. I think I didn't miss any ingredients (or cats.)
Finally, the cake was
ready to hit the oven...except that I couldn't find the second round
cake pan. After a few minutes of looking around the kitchen with
a furrowed brow, I realized that I hadn't baked a double layer cake
since we stopped watering
the bees in a marble-filled cake pan. Out came the marbles,
in went the batter. Finally, the cake was in the oven and I could
relax. Happy birthday week, Mark!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I can't recommend that cake recipe to a beginner --- it was delicious, but unfortunately pretty hard! I had some issues with it not coming out the pan too, which I covered up with excess frosting.
Instead, I'd recommend this basic chocolate cake recipe for beginners. It's fluffy and tasty and very, very easy.
I have a recipe for a cake that doesn't have any eggs in it, which is actually our preferred chocoate cake, if you're interested!
Our chickens are being stubborn about the eggs lately too... we hardly have enough to fill our regular customer orders, and definately not enough to eat!