From the first moment my family tasted Jane's chocolate cake, they were after me to get the recipe. Even people who say they don't like chocolate love Jane's moist, creamy cake. But the recipe, which we've somehow lost over the years, was kind of tricky....
As I remember, you combine the melted chocolate squares, sour milk, sugar, and so forth in one bowl—and the flour combination in another bowl. Then you mix it all together. At this point, though, chaos breaks loose in your mixing bowl. The ingredients suddenly disintegrate into a mass of gruesome-looking black curdles. You're sure something has gone terribly wrong.
But Jane's instructions were very specific about what to do next. "If mixture separates," her handwritten recipe read, "PROCEED—all the same!" Now, I've found that if you simply do what Jane said, and just calmly go on following the recipe, you end up with a marvelous cake.
