Death by Chocolate

On Saturday, we were invited to eat dinner with friends. They were going to make the Thai food. Our assignment was to bring pizza for the kids to eat and dessert.


The pizza part was easy -- cheese pizza bought from the local Acme. But the gourmet kind.

What about dessert? What to make? What to make?

Pumpkin pie? No, I could not remember if the other teenage boy liked pumpkin.

Cinnamon rolls? No, I had done that before and there is the unspoken challenge to always bring something new.

My grandma's famous Texas sheet cake? No, I had done that before too.

So...the only thing left was to make a cake with the name "Death by Chocolate." Now this recipe was given to me by a very good friend named Mary Anne. Years ago, Mary Anne came to visit one day and wanted to bring something special to spoil my children -- they were quite young at the time. And she spoiled them with pieces of this rich cake served with scoops of ice cream. She also gave me the recipe, but I had never made the cake.

This occasion seemed like the perfect excuse to make this rich cake, but I needed several ingredients. And I needed those cheese pizzas.

So Saturday morning after piano lesson, I rode my bike to the Acme and bought the pizzas, cake mix, chocolate pudding, chocolate chips, and a half gallon of ice cream. That was a lot to stuff in my back pack. The ice cream was especially cold against my back as I rode home.

Before her soccer game, my daughter helped make the batter and layer the batter with chocolate chips into the bundt pan.

After the cake baked and cooled, my oldest boy got a lesson in how to make butter frosting. I showed him how to drizzle the icing on the cake; he got to eat the leftover frosting. Lucky guy.

We had not been at our friends' house very long when the door bell rang. It was their next door neighbor. She came to ask Nancy for two scallions. I recognized her. She was a friend of Mary Anne, the very same Mary Anne whose chocolate cake we had made for dessert.

This seemed like more than just a mere coincidence. I felt like my old life as an academic had intersected with my mom life. My mom life felt more real.

Later that evening after a wonderful spicy Thai dinner, we sliced the cake generously, added scoops of vanilla ice cream, and everyone ate -- the kids wolfed down the dessert but the adults savored it slowly. There was half a cake left over. My friend and I divided the remainder between us. And on Sunday night, my children enjoyed a second piece!