A Luminous Halo

"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." --Virginia Woolf

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Location: Springfield, Massachusetts, United States

Smith ’69, Purdue ’75. Anarchist; agnostic. Writer. Steward of the Pascal Emory house, an 1871 Second-Empire Victorian; of Sylvie, a 1974 Mercedes-Benz 450SL; and of Taz, a purebred Cockador who sets the standard for her breed. Happy enough for the present in Massachusetts, but always looking East.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Vegan Chocolate-Orange Torte

Cordelia thinks I should be recording every vegan dish I make. Here's one she liked. It's the same chocolate cake I've been making for birthdays for years, baked in two layer pans and split. This is what our junior high school home economics teachers used to call a wacky cake. Here's the recipe:

Sift together 2 1/2 cups of flour, 2/3 cup cocoa, 4 teaspoons of baking soda, 1 1/2 teaspoons of egg replacer and a pinch of salt. Set aside. Add three or four tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice to a two-cup measure and fill the rest of the way with soy milk. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix two cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons of water and 3/4 cup of cooking oil. Add a third of the flour mixture, half of the soy milk, more flour, the rest of the milk, and the rest of the flour, beating well between additions. Pour into two greased and floured 9" pans and bake 1/2 hour at 350 degrees. When layers are cool, split each into two thin layers with a serrated knife.

Melt some semisweet chocolate (Ghirardelli is vegan) and thin with a bit of Silk coffee creamer to spreading consistency. Frost first layer with this. Top with second layer. Poke some holes in second layer with a fork and pour over some triple sec. Then spread with orange marmalade heated to spreading consistency. Top with another layer of cake and another layer of chocolate frosting. Top with last layer and still more chocolate frosting. I decorated the top with some orange slices. Everybody liked it, especially the vegans, who usually end up with something like an apple and a slice of bread for dessert when they visit non-vegan households.

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