Chocolate and cinnamon and lots of love...the Green Family Chocolate Cookie Sheet Cake

I feel more than honored when someone shares a family recipe with me.  I don't take it lightly, because it's not just a cookie or a pie or whatever that you've been given, it's a memory, a very cherished memory.  All too often, there is no recipe to give; a lot of our grandmothers and mothers cooked or baked by look and by feel.  I remember asking my mom how to make her incredible dressing for potato salad, and there was no actual recipe because she just knew what to do.  She and I spent an entire afternoon measuring and figuring until we had a written recipe for me, in my newlywed kitchen, when I wanted so much to make every meal just right, and every specialty that my new husband loved....funny thing about that recipe...in no time at all I learned to make it as Mom did and does--by look, by the smell of it, by touch and taste, and that painstakingly figured recipe is long gone.  I've no idea whatever happened to it.  Don't need it.  

Just this past weekend we traveled a couple of hours to be with dear friends who were saying goodbye to their father for the last time.  I never knew Mr. Green, but the more I heard about him the more I wished I had; he sounded just like the kind of person I admire.  He taught his children to love good books, and music; he loved to tease and to laugh, and he did not complain, ever. And he would go anywhere to help someone who needed it.  He left three daughters and a son who are all strong, intelligent, remarkable people.  It was a privilege to be part of such a tender service.

My style of cooking is called 'comfort food.'  Not for me are all the exotic things; you can keep your truffles and your walnut oil  and pate and so on.....the meal I'm most often asked to make is fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and blackberry pie, and it is a pure joy to prepare exactly that for whoever asked.  It's the kind of food you might have helped Mom, or Grandma, or both...make, for Sunday dinner.  It's the kind that relies on good simple ingredients, lovingly prepared and tended, and lavishly served--"have some more! there's plenty!" Mine is the kitchen to come to when you're craving rice pudding.  My measuring cups are my great-grandmother's, what she began housekeeping with more than a hundred years ago.  To eat at my table is to feel linked to the past, the memory of meals and loved ones as present as those who sit there today.

So I knew I wanted to make something to take for the family to enjoy.  Not to be served at the luncheon that would follow, but just for the siblings and their families, something that would remind them of bygone days when their parents were young and healthy and their own children were not yet born.  Something that, at first glance, at first taste, would bring their lost ones more clearly into the day.

Do not ever call this a Texas sheet cake, lest you dishonor the Greens and their Grandma Thiel.  And make it exactly as written, right down to using the tool (I love that drawing of a whisk) and not wiping out the sauce pan when you use it for the icing.

Grandma Thiel’s Cookie Sheet Cake
2 sticks margarine
1 cup water
Place in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
Add 4 T cocoa powder. Stir good for one minute (use this tool!) Then let cool slightly.
In a mixing bowl, combine:
2 C flour
2 C sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
Add the hot cocoa mixture and stir (a spoon this time).
Add 2 eggs, ½ C buttermilk, and 1 tsp vanilla.
Pour batter into a 10” X 15” jelly roll pan (ungreased is fine). Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
While the cake bakes, prepare the frosting.

In a 2 ½ qt heavy sauce pan (I use the same one from the cake, don’t even wipe it out) melt 1 stick margarine. Add 4 T cocoa. Boil and stir with that whisk for 1 minute.
Remove from heat and add 6 Tbsp buttermilk. Stir well. Add 1 box (1 lb.) powdered sugar, stir, then add 1 tsp vanilla. You can also add ½ c chopped nuts here (or leave out, because kids hate them, Aunt Nancy says.)
(I’ve found that the 1 lb. box of powdered sugar works better than measuring out 4 c of powdered sugar …. Not sure why.)
Pour the warm frosting over the warm cake. Let set.

It lasts a week. You can freeze some. It can also be stored in the fridge to set the frosting and to keep it nice when the weather is hot. Cut the cake in brownie size pieces. And it’s fine to make the day before you need it. 

Do you see what I mean? I didn't even know their grandma, but I feel as if I do.  While I measured and stirred and iced, I heard her comments, and I made sure to leave the nuts off the icing.  

And when I gave it to the family Saturday, along with their favorite pies, I knew that for a moment they felt at least a little of the love Grandma had shown them every time she baked that cake for them, and urged them to have another piece.  That's what comfort food does: it recaptures a little of what is lost, warms you, soothes you.

Enjoy....