Cake On Saturday: July 25: Mocha Loaf Cake

With Leon and his cake at the Durham Bull

I got a head start on the weekend, this time. Our daughter took college campus tours at Duke University and Davidson College at the end of the week, so I made a loaf cake that could easily be packed for a car trip. Since Durham was one of our stops, we knew we would have to visit our friends, Leon and Areli, who own Cocoa Cinnamon, Durham's finest coffee house. Saturday was Leon's birthday, so I made three loaf cakes; one for our car trip, one as a gift for Leon, and one for the folks who watched our house and cats while we were away.

I chose the Mocha Loaf Cake from the Opti-Mrs. Cook Book by the Atlanta Optimist Club, published in 1958. This book is pretty fabulous. It includes recipes submitted by wives of club members. It features recipes, requested by the editors, from wives of national and Georgia politicians. It includes advertisements from long-defunct Atlanta businesses including their "prefix + five digit" phone numbers. The best advertisement is the one for J. Austin Dillon Company, funeral directors and ambulance service, clearly a family-owned business of the Dillons and Thomases. Mrs. Dillon and Mrs. Thomas are listed prominently in the ad as "Lady Embalmers."

This book is also among my favorite cookbooks because it includes notes and recipes by its previous owner. This lady was obviously a bit fond of Mock Cheese Cake (uses egg, condensed milk and applesauce instead of cream cheese). She has several versions of the recipe, one written in her own hand, stuck into the back of the book. She used a straight pin like a staple to hold a small stack of recipe clippings together. I wonder if she ever found the perfect Mock Cheese Cake recipe...

While I am intrigued by a cheesecake that contains no cheese, I thought that my Mocha Loaf Cake was a better choice for this week. The cake contains buttermilk, strong coffee and unsweetened chocolate. The frosting has coffee, too, as well as cocoa and cinnamon. The mocha flavor is really nicely balanced and the cake is very light. I used disposable loaf pans for portability, and they worked really well. For the frosting, I added a little more powdered sugar than the recipe prescribed because I was afraid it would be too soft and melted for the trip. The family thought the frosting was a little dry, but they gobbled it up. Leon enjoyed his cake and gave me great feedback; he thought that the flavors of coffee, cinnamon and chocolate were well balanced, and he enjoyed the contrast between the soft cake and the texture of the frosting. I might make this as a layer cake in the future because of the dark/light, firm/fluffy contrast of this cake and its frosting.

Our trip to Durham was terrific fun and beneficial to Autumn in prioritizing her college choices. It helped her frame her Duke TIP camp experiences at Duke and Davidson for making her college choice. She is a great student with (a lot of opinions and) aspirations for attending medical school. She wants to become a forensic pathologist, or medical examiner. But we'll be proud of her no matter what college or career she chooses... even if she decides to become a "Lady Embalmer."