Chocolate buttermilk Cake Recipe

Photo by Nadia Jasmine

I know what you're thinking. Cake? How can you be thinking about cake on the Monday after Easter? Didn't you get enough chocolate in your Easter basket? And normally, making something sweet would be the last thing on my mind.  But there was leftover buttermilk in the refrigerator and I didn't feel like making biscuits. (I love the taste of buttermilk in baked goods but would rather chew glass than actually drink it.)

This is an incredibly easy cake to put together and doesn't take much time. You really don't even have to frost it, just serve it like a snack cake cut into squares. Or you can bake it into cupcakes.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine:

            2 cups flour

            1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

            1 ½ tsp. baking soda

            Scant tsp. salt

In another bowl, cream together:

            1 ¾ cups granulated sugar

            1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened

When the sugar/butter mixture is fluffy, beat in

            3 large eggs, one at a time

Add:

            2 tsp. vanilla extract

Mix the cocoa/flour mixture with the sugar/butter/egg mixture, alternating with:

            1 ½ cups buttermilk

Begin and end with the flour mixture.  Don’t overbeat.

Pour into a 13 x 9 brownie pan that’s been treated with non-stick cooking spray.  You can bake this cake in round layers but I like to make it in a 13 x 9 rectangular pan for easy snacking.

 Bake for 40 minutes or until a knife or toothpick comes out clean.

Cool the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes.  Invert the cake to cool it completely.  (Or, you can just leave it in the pan so you don’t have to scrounge up a rectangular plate to put the naked cake on.)

Frost when the cake is cool, if you want to.

Chocolate Buttermilk Frosting

½ stick unsalted butter

3 Tbsp. buttermilk

3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder

2 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Combine the butter, buttermilk and cocoa powder in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

Remove from heat and add the confectioner’s sugar.  If it’s too stiff, you can add a little bit of sweet milk.

Beat until smooth.  Add the vanilla. Spread on the cake.

Enjoy!

Blogs to Watch Out For: The Diabetic Foodie

If you're diabetic or just want to eat great food that's good for you, check out Diabetic Foodie, where the recipes include gluten-free and heart healthy and completely tasty-sounding dishes.

Pacific Rose Apples

When I moved to Los Angeles, I discovered all kinds of really delicious fruit I'd never encountered before, fabulous berries, wonderful melons, magnificent stone fruit (dragon heart plums!!!). And best of all, I found that you could more than the three default types of apples (Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith) in any grocery store. I come from a family that knows apples and my uncle (who lent his name to Jim's Apples) had nothing but disdain for those varieties. I think he would like the Pacific Rose Apple, a sweet and crisp variety that has just shown up in California supermarkets. It's another one of those lovely red and gold (or red and green in some cases) apple and it fills the spot previously held by the Envy Apple, which is now out of season. Pacific Rose apples are cheaper than Envy apples, which is another selling point for them. (Although once you've had one, you won't need to be sold.) For more information on Pacific Rose apples, go here.

Netflix Streaming and me

Despite what all the nutritionists say about eating mindfully--i.e., eating your meals at a table like a civilized person--I often eat lunch at my desk. I'm not actually working. Most often I'm updating social media or checking the news or even playing solitaire, which I find very soothing if it's been a stressful morning. Sometimes I'm writing.  I don't need to pay attention to what I'm eating as it's pretty much the same thing I eat for lunch every day.  Sometimes, if I don't have a heavy workload, I like to extend my lunch hour into 90 minutes, or even two hours and watch a movie. I have the cheap Netflix option that allows me to stream movies and television shows to my heart's content, which would be awesome if I wanted to watch gems such as Stop or My Mom Will Shoot; DC Cab (starring Mr. T) or Brainsmasher: A Love Story. There are some good movies available, even some great ones--like Lars and the Real Girl and the documentary This Movie is Not Yet Rated, and it's a great place to catch up on television series you'venever seen (like Weeds), but often I have to click through screen after screen to find something that I either haven't seen or would want to see. And then I found this blogpost on the Huffington Post's "CaptNetfliain7 Tools to Help Y Gadget" site:  Netflix Movies on Streaming that are Actually Good: & Tools to Help You Find Them. Written by Jason Gilbert and posted early last month, it's the first place you need to go to improve your streaming life. I also discovered "Netflix Instant Movies that Don't Suck," a blog that updates fairly regularly. My lunch-time movies breaks have gotten so much more fun. (And if you haven't seen Lars and the Real Girl, you should. It's quirky, warm-hearted and funny. Ryan Gosling acts his heart out and eve

Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey--an anti-review

I read for a living as well as for pleasure, and I read a lot.  I mostly read mysteries for my own amusement, but I also love horror and fantasy and all the hybrids of those three genres. Watching Game of Thrones (it's back tonight!!) has rekindled my love of historical fantasy and I'm always looking for fantasies that feature female protagonists. When Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey crossed my desk, I was delighted. I wasn't daunted by the length (900+ pages) because I like a writer who takes the time to build her world. I wasn't put off by the sometimes overly ornate prose. (I  cut my teeth on Tolkien.) I wasn't even put off by the heroine's profession (she's basically a sacred slut). At least, not at first. The further I got into the book, though, the more disenchanted and disengaged I felt. The protagonist, Phedre, is so incredibly beautiful and so incredibly sexy, and so incredibly awesome all around that it becomes tiresome. She is the quintessential "Mary Sue" character and that kind of character is usually not very interesting. And yet...Kushiel's Dart has 453 reviews on Amazon.com and 251 of them are five-star reviews. I don't feel the love. And neither, actually does Phedre, because she's an anguisette, a woman who experiences agony and ecstasy simultaneously.  It's not that she can't feel pain, she feels it as exquisite pleasure. The more I read, the more I felt like I was reading 50 Shades of Grey tarted up in fantasy dress. To put it mildly, I was disappointed. To put it frankly, there were times I was kind of icked out by the heroine's belief that her only value was as a sex object. Not to mount my feminist hobby horse but here at Kattomic Energy, it makes me kind of sad that girls are reading this book and identifying with the heroine. It's really ashame because the world-building was terrific.
Opinions anyone?

Roasted Brussel Sprouts Recipe

It's Easter Sunday and I am in a cooking kind of mood. I just posted the recipe for roast Pork Loin with Pineapple-Mustard Glaze over at my Southern Cooking site at BellaOnline and now I'm about to go make it for Sunday dinner. (That would be lunch to y'all Yankees.) I haven't actually done much cooking this month. i am fortunate enough to live with a good cook who takes up the slack when I'm busy. So roast pork loin and maybe some baked Brussels Sprouts. This is the recipe you make for people who turn up their noses at Brussels Sprouts. The recipe turns them into lovely, spicy morsels that are as addictive as junk food.  Really.  I promise.  (There are people in this world who will try to convince you that if you mash up steamed cauliflower it takes like mashed potatoes. I am not one of those people. But believe me when I tell you that the first time I made these, they didn't even get to the table--people were eating them right off the pan, standing over the stove.) Yummy and good for you!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees (F).

Spray a cookie sheet with non-stick spray or linen with aluminum foil that's been lightly coated with olive oil.

1 1/2 pounds fresh Brussels Sprouts (You use frozen but fresh sprouts are dirt cheap, so why not use fresh?) 

3 Tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. Herbes de Provence

1 tsp. salt

tsp. (or more) Crushed red pepper flakes.  (Can also use 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper)

Combine spices with olive oil in a big Ziplok bag and shake up. 

Cut the tough ends off the sprouts and remove any wilted leaves or yellow spots. Cut in half or in quarters and shake with the seasonings. (Don't worry if any leaves fall off, they'll cook up nice and crispy.)

Spread the seasoned sprouts on the cookie sheet and bake for 40 minutes until they're crisp at the edges and tender on the inside. If desired, sprinkle with more salt before serving.

Serve hot.  

Binding Spell by Christine Pope--a book review

Taken from her aunt's estate by kidnappers who were actually after a royal princess, Lark Sedassa finds herself in the hands of a nobleman who is in no hurry to correct his mistake when he discovers his beautiful captive is herself the daughter of a wealthy and influential family. Not only does he not intend to return Lark to her family, the golden-eyed Kadar Arkalis intends to make her his bride.

Binding Spell is the latest of Christine Pope's fantasy-romance series "Tales of the Latter Kingdoms," and she's painting with a darker palette this time out. There's malign magic at work in Kadar's castle, and secrets that could prove deadly for himself and his people. Lark, who practices her own magic in secret, must face the threat this evil poses and finally accept her own powers, which she has always kept hidden.

As always, Pope's writing is lushly sensual, hauntingly descriptive without shading into purple prose like those fantasy novels where there are so many adjectives readers begin to wonder if the writer was being paid by the word. The Latter Kingdoms may be fantastic realms, but the details of the day-to-day lives of the characters that live there have a realistic familiarity.  Gowns get dirty; food stores have to be replenished; inconvenient mistresses need to be sent away.

The characters share that reality and are dimensional and believable. Lark is a serious-minded young woman whose growing love for her husband eventually extends to everyone in his domain. Indeed, one of the best scenes in the book occurs when Lark uses his ability to sense lies to dispense justice in Kadar's "Hall of Grievances."

Kadar is a flawed man whose flaws bring him to the brink of terrible actions, but those flaws also make him more than the usual "alpha male" hero. The attraction between him and Lark goes beyond chemical into the alchemical, and their bond is stronger than any magic. (Pope makes her readers wait for her lovers to consummate their passion but she makes the wait worth it.)

What fantasy would be complete without an evil magician? There's one here, and he's a great character, the kind of manipulator you would get if you crossed Iago with Grima Wormtongue.  You'll know he's trouble the moment you see him, just as Lark does.

Fans of the Latter Kingdom series will be amused by the references Pope makes to plot-points from earlier books, and be intrigued by the teasing hints she offers of characters that will appear in later books. With each "tale," this series gets richer and more developed and while the books stand alone, readers really should treat themselves to all of them.

Orange Cauliflower

Saveur.com

I don't do the grocery shopping for my household, but the other day I found myself in the produce section of my neighborhood Ralphs. There, nestled next to the broccoflower (possibly my favorite vegetable) was ... an orange cauliflower. Naturally I wanted to bring some home and taste it but it was way more expensive than any head of cauliflower should be, so instead I came home and Googled it.
Turns out the orange variety (tons more beta-carotene than the white variety) was developed from a mutant plant found in a swamp north of Toronto. Food writers who have tasted it say it's a bit sweeter than white cauliflower. Well, now I'm even more intrigued. For more information on this colorful new vegetable, go here.  Also check out the Saveur.comhttp://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/The-Story-Behind-Orange-Cauliflower article, "The Story Behind Orange Cauliflower."

Suggested Reading for St. Patrick's Day

And it's a feminist fiction bonus...
Check out Erin Hart's series of books about pathologist Nora Gavin. If you laready know the series, you're in luck, the latest in the series, The Book of Killowen, was just published this month. Archaeologist Cormac Maguire is back too!  Author Hart is incredibly accessible. She's on FB (and not just a fan page) and you can find out more about her books at her site. Nora is an American but the books all take place in Ireland.
For another kind of Irish mystery, dip into Tana French's books featuring the Dublin Murder Squad. The paperback version of her latest, Broken Harbor, will be released next month. 

Read some Roman Noir for Ides of March

If you don't know Kelli Stanley's great roman noir novels (Nox Dormienda and The Curse Maker), today is a good time to change that.  Set in the first century AD, the books' protagonist is Arcturus, a physician. The books are lots of fun.

Google Celebrates International women's Day

The Red Market by Scott Carney, a review

Scott Carney is an investigative reporter who became interested in the "red market" economy while on assignment for Wired.com and Mother Jones Magazine. The topic kept expanding and before long, the author was deep into the research that would become this book, an examination of the trafficking--legal and not--in human tissue. As it turns out, all those urban legands about waking up in a hotel room soaking in a tub of ice and missing a kidney are not far from the truth, and Carney recounts tales of people kidnapped and kept captive in order to drain their blood and whole industries related to what is called "reproductive tourism." Along the way he gives his readers the history of blood donation in America and the UK and explains how laws designed to protect patient privacy actually help the criminals who are making billions off the illegal trade in human tissue of all kinds.

This is fascinating stuff, a peek into a world that operates on the edges of medical research and in the shadows of government institutions. A thriller writer could find a lifetime of inspiration here. Who knew that India was the source of most of the skeletons found in medical schools today, or that they were sourced from bone traders who got them from grave robbers? (Carney interviews one bone trader who freely admits he snatches burning bodies from funeral pyres as soon as the families have left.) India's ban on exporting human tissue has onlly driven the bone trade underground, and Carney recounts a visit to a rural police station where a cache of skulls has been confiscated and bags of leg bones are coveted by both the Buddhists in next-door Bhutan (as raw material for flutes) and hospitals who want to use them for grafts.

This is what a winner looks like

Photo by Steve Gtanitz

Robin Roberts, glowing on the red carpet at the Oscars!  Fabulous in blue...

Go Danica Go!

This one's for the history books babe! Read the story here. I want the action figure!

When someone really needs help...

I make about half my living editing other people's prose. I enjoy editing and feel a sense of accomplishment when a project's done. Most of my clients are referrals but I pick up clients through Craig's List as well. (One of the books I edited, Debt, by Rachel Carey was recently published and that made me feel terrific. The book is funny and smart and I urge everyone to read it. )
Sometimes, though, you see an ad and you know, you just know that no matter how strong your edit-fu is, you are not going to be able to help the person who's looking for help.  You know that when you see an ad that includes a phrase like this:

MUST BE FLUID WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

I'm not posting this to mock the ad writer but I am bemused that  the ad went on to demand that whoever applied have at least a Master's degree and 10 years of experience. I've worked for clients like that--asking for qualifications way way over the need of the project. I would like to think that they were  compensating for their own shortcomings by looking for the very best in assistance. I'd like to think that but sometimes they were just jerks.

Starcaster--the cpver

Cover by Elsa Kroese

This is the cover for my novel Starcaster, written for the Drifting Isle Chronicles, four novels with the same backdrop. (The other authors are MeiLin Miranda, Charlotte E. English and Joseph Robert Lewis.) The cover is by Elsa Kroese, an illustrator, concept artist and animator who has created many of Charlotte E. English's covers. The entire series of books will be out next month. Making the transition from short story writer to novelist was ... challenging. My natural story-telling length is 1500 to 2500 words so you can imagine. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.

R.I.P. Mindy McReady

Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats" and Mindy McReady's "Guys Do It All the Time" are two of my favorite "sisters are doing it for themselves" anthems, songs that made it past my "no country music" filter along with Garth Brooks' "Thunder Rolls" and Alan Jackson's "Midnight in Montgomery" and the Dolly Parton/Brad Paisley duet "When I Get Where I'm Going," which always makes me cry. When I heard about Mindy McReady's death last night, I wanted to cry too. How much pain do you have to be in to leave your little boys without a parent? How much pain do you have to be in to take your own life? Too much.

Food Porn Alert--Decadent Chocolate Desserts

A picture is worth a thousand words and at least that many calories. Check out the drool-worthy picture gallery at Yahoo news. Console yourself with a box of Thin Mints now that Girl Scout Cookie season is in session.

Really, how hard could it be to change the Constitution?

Enjoy Historical Romance? This Contest is for You!

Over at their website The Jewels of Historical Romance, twelve best-selling romance authors are launching the first of many contests for their readers. The prize for this one is an iPad mini. Deadline to enter is March 31.

Haiku for Lovers--the review

Dance of Love” image by Kjunstorm

We are born loving poetry. As children we delight in rhymes and rhythms and repetitions that older people dismiss as "sing-song" or of they're word snoots, "doggerel." But how old were you when you read Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham? I can still quote it

I would not like them
here or there.
I would not like them
anywhere.
I do not like
green eggs and ham.
I do not like them,
Sam-I-am

I can still quote it and I bet you can too. That's the power of poetry. Once you hear it, it sinks into your synapses and stays there. We are born loving poetry and yet most of us stop reading it when we leave school. And yet poetry is all around us, just waiting to be rediscovered. (In L.A., the metro buses used to carry poetry placards and one weary commute I discovered Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII" with its startling and sexy imagery:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
 
Now that is a love poem.  Which brings me to Haiku for Lovers. One of the most elegant forms of poetry, haiku's strictly structured, 17-sylllable shape is infinitely flexible, endlessly versatile and has become the perfect poetic construct for the 21st century.

This Valentine's Day Buttontapper Press published a collection of poems called Haiku for Lovers: An Anthology of Love and Lust that is a beautiful assemblage of words and images that in another era would have made a gorgeous coffee table book. Every poem is paired with a photo, a painting or an illustration. All of the artwork is nicely done and most beautifully complement their poems. One exception for me was the color photograph "The Modern Femme Fatale" b Nicki Varkevissar that accompanied Sue Mayfield Geiger's three-act haiku "Film Noir." 

The model was lovely and the photograph was nicely done but for me, "Film Noir" forever means black and white, not technicolor. I was also disappointed by the photo of the young woman kicking up her flip-flops in the bed of a truck that accompanied Janet McCann's lovely "Because We Are Old." I wanted this romantic poem about love in the autumn of life to feature a mature couple and not a woman in the lush summer of her life. But those are minor quibbles; as a whole, this is a wonderful collection of bite-sized reveries about love and lust and sex and romance and sometimes everything at once. There's sci fi writer Don Webb's frankly phallic rocketship erection; and Richard Scarsbrook's "Intoxication," an elongated erotic reverie. There are phrases that stick in your heart, like h.l. nelson's "Painstaking lacing of emotional corsets." 

The various stages of love are chronicled here from Fiona Johnson's "New Love" to Dave Wright's emotional "The First Five Months." There's romance here (Kenneth Pobo's sensual "Pink Calla Lily'")  but also doses of practical reality as in Bridget Brewer's "Life Has Taught Me This" and Vuong Pham's "SEX Billboard" in which he talks about what REALLY gets his juices flowing. Then there's Katya anchentseva's "Slept Bad After Sex," which weighs and balances the good and the bad of the night and the morning after.

Editor Laura Roberts'  "outro" (as opposed to an "intro") presents a couple of bonus naughtyhaiku that are offered almost apologetically even though they're both smart and provocative. On sale for less than three dollars at ebook-sellers everywhere, Haiku for Lovers is a perfect non-caloric treat for yourself or a belated VD present for your sweetie. Because everyone needs a little poetry in their lives.

Administrative Assistant Day? Really?

I understand that a lot of holidays were invented by the greeting card industry to sell more cards, but I've always been onboard with Mother's Day and Father's Day. Grandparents' Day never really resonated with me, though. It's somewhere between Arbor Day and Columbus Day (the optional holiday in business) on my personal calendar.
I was blissfully  unaware that there was such a thing as "Administrative Assistant Day" until today though. (I HAD heard of "Secretaries Day" but this appears to be a separate and discrete holiday.)
Here's the thing. I paid my way through college working office jobs. When I moved to Hawaii, I spent several months working as a secretary at the Honolulu Gas Company while I freelanced for the Downtown Honolulu Magazine. I was eventually hired by Aloha Magazine and gratefully left the business world behind. 
I learned a lot from those jobs, skills both useful and practical ranging from the best way to unjam a copy machine to the subtleties of office politics. I also learned some harsh lessons about hierarchy and protocol and the way the world works. We all want to be appreciated for who we are and the contributions we make to our companues. If we're very lucky (and I mostly was), corporate appreciation is expressed in decent paychecks and generous vacation time and good benefits and perks. Perks are nice. The last "real" job I worked as director of development for an independent producer, my boss gave everyone a month's salary as a Christmas bonus. My good friend, who held the same position at a large studio, got (no kidding) a fanny pack emblazoned with the corporate logo and filled with individual serving packages of Oreos and Fig Newtons.
Guess which company had a morale problem?
I'm not someone who wants a gold star just for showing up. I actually think that getting a good day's wage in return for a good day's work is a fine social contract.  What I'm saying is that if you do buy into "Happy Administrative Assistant Day" (which to me always sounds just a bit condescending and if you look at the cards, assumes the AA is female), buy into it in a way that's meaningful for both the employer and the employee. 
Cards are nice.  Who doesn't like cards? But if you really want to show your appreciation for your administrative assistant, the way to do it is to give the AA a paid day off (as Reynolds Aluminum used to do for employees' birthdays) or give them a cash bonus or a multi-purpose gift card. Do something that shows you really DO appreciate your assistant. Because a greeting card just doesn't doesn't really send much of a message these days.

Cherry Walnut Cake Recipe

Every year on George Washington's birthday, my mother made a fantastic cherry/walnut cake with cherry syrup. We ate it warm for dinner with the sauce and then the next day, she'd send us off to school with squares of the cold cake for dessert. If that sounds good to you, check out the recipe on my Southern Cooking site at BellaOnline.