I am not used to getting my recipes from murder mysteries. I do not care how yummy the described food might be, when it is referenced alongside someone getting stabbed to death, it loses its allure. However, when reading Apple Turnover Murder, by Joanne Fluke, I was interested enough to make an exception.
The murder mystery I was reading was part of a series whose shtick is to have a cookie store owner bake goodies and solve the murders that seemingly fall into her lap, sometimes literally. On the whole, I tend to gloss over the provided recipes that detail the baked goods being described in the chapters because they seem to be what I consider to be cheats. Either they rely solely on butter, heavy cream, and other milk products to make them delectable, which does not work for our dairy-allergy household, or they lean heavily on processed foods that we cannot eat anyway. If I am going to go out of my way to bake, I am not going to intentionally use different types of crackers, premade puff pastries (whatever they are), or other brand-specific, full of preservatives and allergens, products. I want to make things from scratch, dagnabit, or as close as can be had without me having to own a farm and mill.
So it was against my better judgment that I was thumbing through the recipes as I was attempting to figure out Whodunnit. When I saw a recipe that a) was both made and baked in the same pan, which works out very well with me being the designated dishwasher in our house, b) did not involve prepackaged foods, c) had no milk or eggs involved, and d) involved cocoa powder, I decided it was worth the attempt to make it. Someone years ago during the Depression Era dubbed the recipe Wacky Cake, but the name alone made it worthwhile to try out. Even better, there were nine ingredients to use, which divided nicely by my three kidlet helpers.
Armed with a copy of a recipe that would hopefully not leave us as dead as some of the characters in that mystery series, my kidlets and I whipped up the cake and I threw it in the oven. I tweaked the icing recipe the book suggested so that I had a lovely liquid icing to drizzle over the finished pieces. We managed to wait until our Wacky Cake was cooled sufficiently to not burn ourselves once we started devouring it. Since our frosting was going to stay in a drippy format, we did not need to cool the cake completely. (I promptly filed that thought away in case I ever cannot keep my hands off a still-warm cake, which happens a bit more frequently than you might think. Just slice it, plunk it on a plate, and drizzle away!)
Four sets of forks brought four sets of tastes-like-a-brownie-with-a-mouth-feel-of-cake up to our mouths. Four people hungrily devoured our Wacky Cake and sopped up the remaining goopy icing with the crumbs. Pig Jr. even licked his plate clean. Then, for added measure, I sent a picture of our delicious if not nutritious snack off to Pig at work, with the promise that he could have some later. Unfortunately, that means I had to stop eating it so I could fulfill that promise. I probably could have thought that one through a little better. At any rate, the four of us who taste-tested the Wacky Cake were thrilled with the results.
Here's where it gets tricky. This recipe was one from a murder mystery, but I cannot remember how the Wacky Cake was used in the storyline. I am fairly certain that there was no mention of kidlets getting hyper beyond belief upon ingesting such a goody. And boy howdy did my kidlets get hyper! They were giggling, bouncing off the walls, attempting to wrestle, and just having a grand ole time. They went from somewhat sleepy after lunch to hopped up on goofballs within five minutes of eating Wacky Cake. I am starting to think that the cake was named based on the behavior of those individuals who consumed it. I really, really hope that whoever ate the cake in the story was not the one who was brutally offed, although if I had not eaten any of the cake myself and witnessed my kidlets in their glorified sugar rushes, I would have suspected them of committing the murder. This cake seemed to remove far too many inhibitions.
In other words, Wacky Cake was an immediate success, and the kidlets and I have plans to make it again soon. I will just have to write out the recipe on a separate card so I am not reading it from the midst of a crime scene. Seriously, this cake is too good to not be able to stomach after reading about someone's gruesome demise.
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