Better Than Sex Cake

Not on the Menu challenge: The Prompt - Write about something memorable you ate that you'd never find on a restaurant menu.

Not every unforgettable meal comes with a reservation.

Maybe it was something your grandmother made without a recipe, a questionable combination you invented as a kid, a snack discovered halfway across the world, or a meal thrown together from whatever happened to be left in the fridge. It might have been incredible. It might have been terrible. You might still be trying to figure out what was actually in it.

For this challenge, write about something you ate that you'd never expect to see on a restaurant menu. Tell us what it was, where you were, who was there, and why you still remember it.

The food doesn't have to be fancy or even particularly good. It just has to come with a story.

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When I was first dating my husband, he got mad at me when I said that the chocolate cake my mom made was better than sex. He did not know that the cake was called that.

My mother said her friend called the cake Robert Redford. What surprised me is how my mother would make that cake every week until no one was eating it any longer.

She did that with pineapple upside down cake too and other deserts, pies, cookies, and fudge. She would get a recipe she liked and wear it out. Also, mother would eat her dessert in the morning for breakfast. Her logic was that she had all day to work it off.

That was probably fine before she was diabetic, and not so good as a diabetic. Once she was diabetic, I remember her telling me that she would sometimes chew up her dessert and then spit it out.

She said that way she could still taste it but she didn’t get all of the calories. I remember thinking, is my mother bulimic? Then I never thought about it again, as I never saw her do that.

My husband said, “My mothers chocolate cake was the best cake I ever ate. It had that chocolate fudge frosting that was from the recipe right off the Hershey’s cocoa box when I was a kid.”

Then I thought he is 71 now, so how many years ago was that? I let it go, just as I let go of the idea of ever making him a chocolate cake with that frosting. I really believe nothing will ever compete with his childhood memories of his mother and that cake, and I do not think it should.

To this day, I have the fudge recipe, as he had me get that from his sister, so I could make the frosting. I do not make much of that fudge as he will eat it until he is sick, and it is all gone in little to no time at all. I certainly can understand death by chocolate in this case.

Any time anyone talks about cake it brings me back to a time when I purchased tickets for a Jim Gaffigan comedy show. I didn’t know anything about him, but a coworker had tickets and couldn’t go to his show and she was selling them at a discount and she said they were good seats.

We could not pass that by, as both my husband and I love comedy, so we went. Now, I really enjoy listening to Jim Gaffigan and recommend him to others. I remember him doing a whole set about cake. Can I make a whole short story about cake?

Oh Jim Gaffigan,
he made me laugh again.
Such a funny man,
talking cake all deadpan.

Cake, is there such a thing as bad cake?
How about overdone cake, or cake that did not bake.
For crying out loud, please for my sake,
stop talking about cake, please!

He would not stop though geez, I was laughing so hard, I spit
on the person sitting ahead of me, oh shit!
Everything was about cake, not about baking,
or raking or taking time out to talk skating.

I was laughing so hard I was breathless!
How could he be so reckless
not to have a warning to remember to breathe.
And then it happened, my husband lost his teeth.

He was laughing uncontrollably.
And after that he was not consolably!
He said it was my fault his teeth landed on the floor.
It could’ve been worse I swore.

Well, enough about cake I say,
we will save more for another day.

After writing this little rhyme, I started to ask others for chocolate cake stories and nothing. I suppose other people do not keep chocolate cake memories like I do.

So, one last story about cake. My grandmother worked at a bakery downtown Minneapolis when I was a baby. My mom talked about how Grandma would bring pastries home every day and how much grandpa and her brothers loved those pastries.

She remembered though that her mother made the best chocolate cake and she remembered her dad and her brothers sitting with their slice of chocolate cake and coffee and everyone was so happy and it was so quiet at those times.

My mother came from a family of ten, so I can believe that is why she said that time was the best! After my grandmother died, my grandpa moved in with my family as my dad had died a few short years after grandma, and grandpa’s favorite thing was chocolate cake and coffee.

It had to be because the combination of cake and coffee reminded him of grandma. I remember how he always had candy in his room. He loved chocolate and so did I and I could almost always count on grandpa to have chocolate, and my favorite were the suckers called black cows.

Oh, did I forget to mention that chocolate is my favorite too. I know some say it is to die for. I am not there yet but as a diabetic, it probably did contribute and does contribute to that end.

I couldn't find my recipe, so I got this from the internet. This is the fudge recipe that was used on my mother's chocolate cake and the fudge she would make at Christmas time. Similar to my fudge recipe made at Christmas time for my husband and one of my sons who especially enjoys the fudge.

Recipes: Classic Hershey's Cocoa Fudge
3 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa (or Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Optional: 1 cup chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, or almonds)

Authors Note: Chocolate is not on my list of foods I eat now. I have put myself in remission from diabetes by changing my diet. No more insulin or pills. Still diabetic. Chocolate remains on my list of favorites. And if I could eat chocolate in moderation, it would still be on my food list.

The fudge recipe was right off the hershey's cocoa box when I was growing up, back in the 50s, & 60s.