2019-07-01_Bake_from_Scratch

19 bake from scratch

retro redo

GRASSHOPPER DRIP CAKE

RETRO RECIPES ARE JESSIE SHEEHAN’S THING. HERE, THE VINTAGE BAKER AUTHOR REMINISCES

ABOUT HER GRANDMOTHER’S CHOCOLATE CAKE AND GIVES IT A MINTY MAKEOVER.

BY JESSIE SHEEHAN

W

hen I was growing up, no one in my home made from-scratch

sweets. I celebrated every birthday with a Baskin-Robbins

mint chocolate chip ice cream cake, and my brother and I

happily ate packaged treats from the grocery store. When we visited

my grandmother’s house, though, she had freshly baked goods on off er

from the moment we arrived until we departed with wax paper-wrapped

chocolate chip cookies and challah in tow.

Of all the treats my grandmother baked for us in her tiny galley kitchen,

it was her chocolate sheet cake that I loved the most. Served with a

dusting of confectioners’ sugar, it was the moistest cake I’d ever had. As

a child, I never thought to ask my grandmother what made her chocolate

cake so fudgy and dense. Years later, I came across the recipe when

going through her collection and discovered the key ingredient to its

amazing texture: mayonnaise.

For this Retro Redo, I may have twirled my

grandmother’s original recipe into a glorious

three-layer grasshopper cake, but I made sure

to keep the crucial element that makes this

cake just as incredible today as it was back then.