My mother's chocolate cream cheese frosting

This week, Michael found out that he passed the PA Bar and is now a licensed attorney!! Yay!

It was high time I made him a cake he could keep (almost) all to himself. In the past, I've not made cakes for our birthdays or special occasions unless there was a large crowd to help eat most of it. After all, an entire two-layer, 9-inch cake to yourself may be a delicious and greedy prospect, but in the end, as we get older, we start to notice that our metabolism is just not up to the task of efficiently dispatching of the extra calories.

But this time he gets most of the cake to himself, as we only had a couple of people to share the cake with--the surprise party planners!

A good friend of Michael's who graduated the year before him suddenly e-mailed me out of the blue on Tuesday, asking if we had plans to celebrate the imminent Bar results (they were estimated to come out on Friday of this week) and if not, if he and his wife could come over and surprise Michael with a bottle of sparkling wine (of course only if Michael passed). Seeing an opportunity to do something special for Michael that I ordinarily would not have been so cunning to pull off (i.e. I am a bad liar and secret keeper--I don't know how I pulled off keeping this from him without hinting something; believe me, it was at the tip of my tongue all week), I wholeheartedly agreed.

Many e-mails later, we came to the decision that we would do a potluck at our home, since Michael wasn't to arrive home from work until about 7:30, going out seemed too annoying at such a late hour and it gave us a good buffer time to prepare food and dessert before he got back. They brought these awesome garlic crescent rolls and a lasagna. I proudly served Michael's latest soup success: Curried Corn Chowder from Once Upon a Tart... with potatoes, chicken, and carrots as a variation. And I made Nigella Lawson's Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake (as previously described), filled the layers with cherry jam, and frosted the cake with one of my all-time favorite frostings: my mother's chocolate cream cheese frosting.


This is the frosting I grew up with. My mother's go-to recipe that we ate on cake, spread on toast, ate right out of the container.... the latter two methods are still my favorite ways to eat this stuff.

I actually make this frosting fairly regularly nowadays, and I freeze portions so we can enjoy it over many months on our toast, but this is probably the first time since my childhood that I've actually applied this frosting to cake.

It's a simple frosting to make, with a distinctive yet not-too-heavy cream cheese flavor, rich chocolate flavor, and notes of coffee and vanilla. The original recipe gets some help from Cool-Whip to lighten and fluff things up. I've made it once with homemade whipped cream as an adult, and it makes it richer-tasting, which is delicious...but almost defeats the purpose. My mother has probably decreased the sugar content over time, so I have no idea what the original recipe looked like, but this version is not too sweet and goes so well with any cake you frost with it.

You can bet this is the frosting our kids, if we have any, will grow up eating too.



Mommy's Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

2 8-oz packages of cream cheese, softened (feel free to use low-fat or fat free cream cheese or even marscapone, or half the amount of cream cheese)
1 16-oz container of whipped cream/Cool Whip
1 Tablespoon instant coffee (I use instant espresso, but you can use regular coffee, decaf, etc)
1/3 to 1/2 cup granulated sugar (adjust to taste)
1 Tablespoon vanilla
4 oz semi-sweet chocolate, chopped (feel free to increase this amount as well...)
2 Tablespoons butter/margarine

Instructions:

In a double boiler, or in the microwave, melt butter and chocolate together. After removing from heat, stir in the coffee granules. Cool slightly.

In a mixer, combine cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until smooth. Add the melted butter and chocolate and coffee mixture and combine until color is evenly distributed.

If you are only going to use this spread for direct eating or on toast, you can mix in the Cool Whip by mixer on low speed too. I usually keep this in the fridge for up to a few weeks; for long term storage, put in tupperwares and freeze. It defrosts very well and stays smooth.

If you are going to frost a cake, go for maximum volume and fold in the Cool Whip in 2-3 additions. First addition, don't worry about folding in gently--just stir it in to lighten up the mixture. Then the last 1-2 additions, fold gently until color is uniform. Frost immediately if needed, or if you can store in fridge for up to many days before you need it. I personally think it tastes better on cake a little chilled, so if possible, chill a little before frosting, or throw the whole frosted cake in the fridge for a little time before serving.

Enjoy!! May it become a family tradition for you too.