Maya and I shared a love of cooking.  I smile when I think of the times we spent together in the kitchen; those are such cherished memories. She especially loved crepes for her sleepover-with-friends mornings, and she invented some interesting combinations of fillings. Blueberry and peanut butter?  She went through a phase of making green cookies. Homemade pizza was another favorite. In recent years, Maya became very independent, looking up recipes online or even making ones up from scratch with no help from me.  Vegan no less! Admittedly, some of her concoctions were, shall we say, unique.

One of her all-time favorites that she often asked me to make was this special vegan chocolate cake.  What was so special about it?  Well, the recipe was sort of cobbled together, but it worked, and was easy to make and very tasty.  But it had a very unique consistency.  Kind of like rubber.  So we called it “rubber cake”, or “Maya cake”.

I can still hear Maya imploring me for that cake on special and not-so-special occasions. “Pleeeese.  I love you daaaady!”  So I would bake a cake for my Maya. She really had me wrapped around the proverbial finger. And I loved it.

Maya and Maya cake, September 1, 2013

Tomorrow we are going up to Woodstock, so I made a “Maya cake” to deliver to Ana. I am no food blogger extraordinaire like Sasha, but here is my feeble attempt at food blogging:

Maya Cake

1 T vegetable oil
1 egg replacer
1\2 t vanilla
1 c soy milk
1 c all purpose flour
1 c sugar
2 1\2 T cocoa
1 t baking soda
1 T confectioners sugar for topping

Put everything in a bowl, whisk briskly, and pour into a springform pan.  Bake at 325 for 30 minutes.  Remove and cool, dust with confectioners sugar. Serve with coconut whip cream. Joke about the extreme rubbery texture and absolute lack of nutritional value.

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