A lot of people have taken credit for making a cook of me—both parents and our housekeeper, to name three—but if I had to choose an influence to credit (not that I’m about to; it’s too much fun watching everyone argue about it), I would credit one who never gave me a cooking lesson in my life: my great-grandmother.
Her real name was Octavia Haygood McArthur, but she decided when I was born that there were too many ‘grandmothers’ in the family (there were three), so she announced that she was going to be called Mackey, and Mackey she always was thereafter.
Mackey never went in for exotic cooking; a fried chicken with yellow squash and greens was a typical example of her everyday cuisine. Her genius lay in being able to take common dishes and cook them well, using spices judiciously and cooking by eye and by taste until it was “right”—one of those infuriatingly vague instructions often given by cooks who do their cooking by eye. Infuriatingly vague, that is, until you watch a cook skilled in the technique. At that point, the realization dawns that such instructions (and there’s a million of them; some of my favorites are “a good bit,” “a tad,” “some,” “a good handful,” “a right smart,” and “not as much as what you got” of something else) are born of years of experience and occasional disasters, until the cook learns when a dish looks right, tastes right, and is right.
That was the sort of cooking Mackey did, and it turned out delicious meals for years. The problem comes when you try to translate these receipts into terms that a cook raised on measuring cups and exact quantities can understand.
Many of those faded ingredient lists (and a lot of these receipts aren’t much more) are hopeless, but a few have survived because they were just too good to let go. The one I have kept is her chocolate cake. It’s a wonderful, rich cake, guaranteed to ruin diets and bring back memories of Sunday dinner after church, with all the heavy dishes that implied. I do this cake mighty rarely; it gets saved for family reunions and such like important occasions.
| 1 c. shortening | 1 c. milk |
| 2 c. sugar | 2 c. flour |
| ¾ c. cocoa | 1 tsp. baking soda |
| 4 beaten eggs | 1 Tbsp. water |
| ICING | |
| 2½ c. sugar | 2 heaping Tbsp. cocoa |
| 1¼ c. milk | 2½ Tbsp. melted butter (yes, I mean butter) |
| 1 c. pecan pieces, broken up by hand | |
Cream together the shortening and sugar, and add the cocoa. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs well and add to the cocoa mixture. Add the milk and flour alternately and gradually. Dissolve the baking soda in the water and add to the mixture. Beat all ingredients well. Line two lightly greased nine-inch layer cake pans with a layer of brown paper (I use the backs of grocery bags cut to fit). Pour batter into the pans evenly and equally, and bake in a 350° F. oven until the cake leaves the edges of the pans and springs back when touched lightly. If you’re not quite sure, stick a toothpick into the center of the layers. If the pick comes out clean, the cake is done. Remove the pans from the oven and invert them on a wire rack to cool.
For the icing: Break up the pecan pieces. This must be done by hand; if you use a grinder of any kind, you get bugbites and not pieces of pecan. Mix the cocoa and sugar; add the milk. Add the melted butter, and cook until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage (234° to 240° F. on your candy thermometer). Remove the pan from the heat and beat the mixture until it thickens and begins to wrinkle at the edges. Add the pecan pieces, and beat it a bit more. Keep in mind that this is basically a chocolate fudge recipe. It must be cooked down some to keep it from running when applied to the cake, but don’t cook it too much, or it will crystallize and be impossible to spread without tearing the cake surface. Let the icing cool completely to room temperature.
To ice the cake: Carefully remove the cake layers from the pans. Place one layer, top side up, on a plate of sufficient size to contain the cake successfully (it’s no end of trouble if you haven’t got it caged and it tries to run away). Ice the layer over its top and sides completely, filling in the undercut produced by the pan to produce a straight side; then carefully transfer the second layer, top side up, to the top of the first. Repeat the icing process. If the cake was completely cool and the icing almost so, when you started, you should now have a successfully iced cake.
This sounds a sight more difficult than it is; the recipe is exacting but not temperamental, save the icing if you don’t cook it the right amount. Even if the icing gets cooked too much and crystallizes on you, it can still be used by working it by hand into shape and using it to fill the undercut of the layers. Or if you like, make fudge with that batch and try another batch of icing. Or take a piece of fudge in one hand and a piece of uniced cake in the other, and take alternating bites from each. It’s just as good that way too.
first ran: February 1988
Return to the Cookery index page
Background image provided by 
Text ©1987 by Sam Waring. All rights reserved.