Chocolate Cake Through the Seasons

A friend offered me a slice of chocolate cake she had baked today. She'd just found her go-to recipe, she explained - a Nigella Lawson recipe. 

As I nibbled on bites of that cake through the afternoon, memories of loved chocolate cakes paraded through my mind. 

There was Sara Lee chocolate pound cake - buttery and moist. There were Delifrance chocolate muffins - studded with melty chocolate chips, and ensconced in white pleated baking parchment cups - the first chocolate muffins I remember ever eating. 

There was the first go-to chocolate cake recipe, copied out of a kids cookbook. I must have been just 12 when I made the recipe again and again, always finishing it was a dusting of icing sugar, fully convinced that it was the best there was - until, fully courageous, I brought it to a party, only to realise all of a sudden that it missed the mark altogether. I'm not sure what went wrong, or if anything did? Perhaps it was just the after taste of not having impressed as I had wished. 

Then there were the chocolate cakes and brownies of university days. There were Leslie Overton's Underdon Brownies, a recipe lovingly shared by a flatmate during university days, written inside a Christmas card, saved through the years and now very faded. Then there was Marks & Sparks' Chocolate Fudge Cake which marked many-a birthday celebration at small group meetings during university days... One summer, Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake from How to be a Domestic Goddess appeared in my kitchen - unforgettable and rich. 

In the young adult years, there were the Sunday Morning Brownies, made time and time again in the constant bid to trade brownies for friendships. There was hot fudge sundae cake. There was a Mrs Field's brownie, gifted by a frolleague, savoured with wonder at the end of a relief-teaching work day on the way home. And there was Lana, a constant, almost taken-for-granted presence in the backyard, before there was Awfully Chocolate. 

Later on there was chocolate beetroot cake which never quite satisfied. There was a chocolate cake recipe from Gourmand Recipes, made for a friend's 2 year old's birthday celebration. Just perhaps, it was the preciousness of that night I had wanted to keep. But the site was closed, and the recipe lost. Along with that, surely there were so many forgotten recipes - a layered banana and chocolate number with two kinds of frosting made for my FIL's birthday one year, the chocolate cupcakes frosted with blue icing and decorated with bluebirds in nests made for a friend's baby shower, and perhaps others that remain truly forgotten. 

 Keiji's 2nd Birthday Cake 

Bluebird Cupcakes for Bindu's Baby Shower 

Not-quite-molten Chocolate Cakes - still to be perfected 

 Chocolate Mousse Cake for the always-appreciative sweet toothed FIL

Aunty Chris's Chocolate Muffins - Ten years and going strong

In some way, those are all cakes of the past - all symbolic of the friendships of the past. Now, though, there is Smitten Kitchen's Everyday Chocolate Cake, Aunty Chris's chocolate muffins, and Serene's brownies - and the option of buying instead of baking one - there's still Lana, Awfully Chocolate, Classic Cakes, and Four Leaves' Coco Exotique - and so many other options besides. 

They were each treasured, went-to, savoured, and kept, whether or not they came with a recipe. But yet, they were all transitory in some way. Some cakes were eaten, recalled fondly, but seldom encountered again. And why did I, through the years, keep on searching for yet another better chocolate cake recipe? 

Chocolate cakes are trifles - and my mind accepts their transient nature well. I have never mourned the passing of a cake. 

Yet, I cling to the passing seasons. A feast of options before me, still unsatiated, I reminisce old recipes and try to recreate them with ingredients meant for another time. I have moved on, and yet, I hold back. How foolish, for surely this is a very different season from whatever I had ever encountered. And in time to come, even these recipes will give way to others. This season shall pass, these relationships will change, and it will be time for a chocolate cake recipe of another kind. Embrace it, I must. For what surprises may I find, from the chocolate cakes that await?