Recipe: Last days of summer Chocolate Pie-pan Cake

Fall is coming; I've seen the ads for school supplies, the news stories about flu shots, the previews of fall TV shows. Then there is something in the landscape--the leaves of wild ash trees along country roads are heavily riddled with dry scaly brown; wild blackberries are in full harvest mode; U-pick blueberries have just a few more weeks left.

And something else: a sense that time has stopped for a moment, that the long warm days are have been around forever, that nature is on hold--for a bit. You know it won't last. So a quiet sense of urgency begins to build. You want to get every last bit of summer enjoyment out of each hazy sunny hour, each calm warm evening with crickets mildly chirping.

I still must take a road trip to a certain lake in the mountains to the south, spend a day or two in a small coastal town, spend hours reading in the lawn chair--feeling the breeze that carries the scent of honeysuckle.

Meanwhile I'm freezing blueberries and sliced peaches like mad.

That muskrat house along the community path--by the winter-flooding creek--wasn't it awfully big this year? Doesn't that foretell a colder than usual winter?

I realize I haven't eaten an apple for months, while I've enjoyed melons, berries, peaches, corn, cucumbers and fresh tomatoes instead.

I haven't used the oven much the past months--don't want to heat up the house--but now and then I have to bake a chocolate cake to eat with vanilla ice cream. I made up the recipe from several others. I'd rather bake something myself and know it has healthy ingredients and not too much sugar, than buy a cake mix or cake at a store that has unknown preservatives or (gulp) maybe even hydrogenated shortening.

Then I buy fat-free vanilla ice cream to eat with it (I just don't read the ingredients on it, I know they aren't all "natural;" the fat-free is what I want--too much dairy fat isn't good for you, I have to save my arteries for Christmas cookies made out of butter):

Chocolate Pie-pan Cake (to eat with ice vanilla cream and cherry brandy)

1/3 cup unsweetened powdered cocoa
(the blend of natural and dutched 100% cocoa)
3/4 cup white unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 large eggs (cage-free, vegetarian fed)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, or light olive oil
Vanilla ice cream
Cherry brandy
1/2 cup cherry preserves

Mix the dry ingredients, including the cocoa powder. In separate bowl, beat eggs, one at a time, into the sugars. Beat in the oil. Mix in the dry ingredients.

Grease a glass 9" pie pan with some olive oil. Pour the batter into the pie pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes, or until when you press down on the top lightly, it springs back.

Let cool to where it is still warm. Cut into triangles and put in bowls.

Spoon vanilla ice cream onto cake. Mix the cherry brandy with the cherry preserves. Make a well in the ice cream and put tablespoon of the brandy mix into it.