Mimesis and Midnight Chocolate Cake

I read somewhere that Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin impersonation contest and did not win. I don't know if this story is true but I like it. Something funny happens when we try to be ourselves. Now the Chaplin situation is more complicated I know. He would be impersonating an act, but still. I think about how complicated that could get, and my mind wanders. He would be competing against impersonators who have obsessively "perfected" their outfits, make up, acts... Did their immaculate re-enactments of his work make him uneasy? Did he overdo it or was he too casual? did he get out-Chaplined by the mimics?

Then I think about how strangely we sometimes act when our awareness of ourselves is heightened for some reason. I've struggled to explain this before. I still find it hard to articulate how easy it is to turn into an imitation of yourself when you are in fact aiming for the opposite. It's almost as if when you try to isolate whatever it is that you are, in order to be it, you interrupt the flow of the process of being. I've caught myself in such moments before. I don't like the feeling. It's like wearing wet jeans.

A few weeks ago when Steve was coming to visit me in my little town for a few days I started thinking about this. Just before he got there I looked around me and wondered what my life looks like; what I look like in it. But I quickly distracted myself to help the moment pass for fear of ending up in that hyper-self-conscious state of awkward and anxious mimicry. At midnight Steve told me he was really craving chocolate and I said I'd bake a chocolate cake with the rest of our bottle of red wine. 
-Right now?

-Right now. 
And as we ate our chocolate cake with spoonfuls of whipped cream from a mason jar at two in the morning whilst discussing faith or religion or rationality or god knows what, I thought: If we ever have to audition as ourselves, we should do this scene. I'm pretty certain no one else's rendition could even come close.
 

Chocolate Red Wine Cake 
(bake this cake when someone craves it, for it does not keep well.)

6 tablespoons soft unsalted butter

3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/4 cup  white granulated sugar

1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk

3/4 cup red wine (we used chianti)

1 teaspoon good vanilla

1 cup + 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1/2 cup good cocoa powder

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line the bottom of a medim round cake pan with parchment paper, and grease the sides.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugars and mix until fluffy: 2-3 minutes. Add the egg and yolk and mix well. Then add the red wine and vanilla. The batter will look a little strange but that's fine. 

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together, right over your wet ingredients. Mix until 3/4 combined, then fold the rest together with a rubber spatula. Spread batter in pan. 

Bake 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool in pan on a rack for about 10 minutes, then flip out of pan and cool the rest of the way on a cooling rack. Dust with powdered sugar and eat with whipped cream. 

 

Newness

This is Pipp. He is the newest addition to my family. he started out really small and has just moved into his bigger tin can. I have a feeling he's gonna need even more space soon. I've been trying to incorporate a lot of herbs into what I cook these days just to keep up with the ones I have in my kitchen. Soon I'm gonna have to resort to pesto-making, but it's still under control. Sweet basil in a savory crepe with cracked pepper and pecorino romano, which the cheese lady didn't let me pay for? So I went home for lunch today, you can probably tell. It was indulgent and brilliant.

All Purpose Crepes

2 eggs (get real farm eggs they're delicious)
1 1/4c good milk
1c sifted flour (a.p. or pastry will do)
pincha salt
1tsp sugar
2 tbsp melted butter or other oil you like

Mix the above ingredients really really well. If you feel like cleaning a blender, you could use that but I just used my big big whisk and burned some calories. The consistency should ideally be like heavy cream. If it's like custard, you need more milk. You want a runny batter with no clumps.

Chill covered for about an hour. I made mine in the morning before I went to work and used it at lunch. That worked just fine.

In a non-stick crepe pan/frying pan that has been lightly oiled on medium heat, cook 1/4c batter at a time. Swirl the pan to get a thin and even(ish) crepe but don't fuss. You'll wreck a few and get the hang of it. cook for a minutes or so per side, and use your own judgment for doneness, pans and batters vary, of course. If you're like me and you cooked way too many crepes, cook the ones you're not eating a little less and wrap and refrigerate them. Then when you want to eat one, you can heat it on the same pan and it won't brown too much.
So so good. I promise.

I couldn't resist. I had a sweet one with brown sugar and lemon, too.