The Sandpoint Eater: Christmas is coming

By Marcia Pilgeram
Reader Columnist

I can’t remember the last time I hosted Christmas, but it was likely 12 or 13 years ago. Once the grandbabies were old enough to know of Santa’s existence, the old, jolly one began rerouting his path from Sandpoint to their respective homes. I respect my offspring and their desire to create their traditions, and I never add any guilt to holiday plans. I’m happy to go wherever I am wanted or needed.

This year is going to be special as I’m hosting an amalgamation of Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have motive and strategy; my Christmas decorations have barely come out of storage in the last decade or so, and for all our good intentions to sort through the holiday treasures when the summertime gang is here, it has yet to happen. So, I’m decking the Thanksgiving halls, stairs, mantels and anything else that will hold a piece of my rich Christmas collection. 

I’m buying each family some holiday totes, and no one leaves without their share of Christmas past. I have forewarned everyone that anything left behind is headed to Bizarre Bazaar (and I’m confident they’re secretly pleased).

As luck would have it, I have a travel show to attend in France on the first of December, and Thanksgiving is late this year. I’ll be sad to miss the tail-end of the holiday weekend with them, but I feel it will take some pressure off their parting gift selections. I won’t be in the living room when it happens, influencing their choices: Take this! Take that! You made this! Oh, look! Do you remember?

I have plenty of other treasures for them to sort through as well, but there’s something about digging through the Christmas boxes, old photos and my recipe collection that makes me quite sentimental. It stirs up memories that can take me back to when (my) time began. 

Aside from worn boxes of childhood ornaments (some hand cross-stitched by my mother) and four generations’ worth of bronzed baby shoes, I still have my first edition Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls and still haven’t decided if I’m ready to pass that along. Ten-year-old me would have given my most coveted possessions to be one of the twelve young testers featured on the first page. Randee, the pretty girl with the short, silky pageboy haircut and a light scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, was my all-time favorite. 

While my Beatlemania friends were donning shaggy black wigs and pretending to be George or Ringo, I secured my 4-H apron and channeled Randee. I had the names of the other testers memorized, too, and eventually handled the introduction page so often that it separated from the binding. 

Sometimes, my mother would quash my recipe-testing dreams, deeming a recipe “too complicated” or the ingredients “too expensive.”  I wholly sympathize with her with today’s grocery prices (especially butter).  

Once I began testing recipes as part of my culinary passions, I thought of those four boys and eight girls from my youth and wondered if they were real or simply fictional marketing tools like Betty Crocker. I’d like to think they were real kids (maybe the children of the advertising team) who got together in the test kitchen at least once a month. 

This recipe for Hot Chocolate Pudding Cake is featured in the cookbook mentioned above, and I’m sure many of my contemporaries will remember it as something their mother once made. I thought it odd that the recipe called for dousing the cake with boiling water before baking, but that makes the magic happen! 

Though I’ve tweaked it a bit over the years, it’s still a favorite simple (grandkid-proof) recipe. It produces a rich, dark chocolate cake that rests magically on a gooey, hot pudding bed. It’s still best eaten slightly warm (for whatever holiday you choose to serve it).

Hot Chocolate Pudding Cake

This cake has been around forever — it’s like the original lava cake. It’s especially good when served warm from the oven. Bailey’s Irish Cream is a good adult substitute for the milk. Serves 8.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

• ¾ cup white sugar

• 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

• 2 tsp baking powder

• ½ tsp salt

• ½ cup milk

• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

• 1 cup lightly toasted pecans, chopped

• ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or grated chocolate)

• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar

• ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1 ¾ cups hot water

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter a 9×9-inch baking pan or cast iron skillet of similar size. Sift flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Stir in milk, vanilla and butter until smooth. Fold in pecans and chocolate until just mixed. Spread the thick batter evenly into the prepared baking pan. Combine brown sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa in a small bowl; sprinkle lightly on top of batter, then pour hot water evenly over batter. Bake in the preheated oven until center of cake is almost set, about 45 minutes. Brown sugar, cocoa powder and hot water will magically form a chocolate sauce that will settle to the bottom of the cake as it bakes. Serve warm, spoon into individual bowls, dust with confectioner’s sugar or top with vanilla ice cream. It’s doubtful you will have any leftovers; if so, cover and refrigerate. Warm back up to serve.