Chocolate Praline Torte — The Thanksgiving with My Brother at the Table

Thanksgiving was last week and I’m only writing about it now because the day had so much in it that I needed two weeks to know what I’d say. Cody sat at the kitchen table for the first Thanksgiving in two years — he’d missed last Thanksgiving inside the unit, where the meal was a turkey loaf served on a partitioned tray and the men ate in shifts because the dayroom couldn’t hold everybody at once. This Thanksgiving, he sat in his old chair, the one to Mama’s right that’s been his chair since he was old enough to sit at the table by himself, and he carved the turkey because Mama asked him to, and the carving was the first time most of the room had seen him hold a knife in his hand for any reason at all in two years.

Aunt Linda drove down from Tulsa with Roy. Mama’s sister Aunt Patty, who lives in McAlester two and a half hours southeast of us, drove up with her husband Bobby and their two teenage kids — Cody’s twin cousins, Hannah and Hayden, who are sixteen and have grown six inches since they’ve last been in our kitchen. Roy brought another tin of his ex-mother-in-law’s peanut brittle and shook everybody’s hand exactly the same way he’d shaken Mama’s in the practice introduction last month. And Iris drove down from Bristow alone in her dad’s sedan because her parents had flown to Memphis for her father’s father’s ninetieth Thanksgiving, and Karen had told her she could spend Thanksgiving with whichever friends’ family she wanted, and she’d picked us. I’d laid an extra place setting for her without asking Mama.

Twelve people at the kitchen table once we extended it with the folding leaves and pulled in the two folding chairs from the garage. Twelve plates. Twelve sets of silverware. Twelve napkins. Mama did the turkey and the gravy and the green-bean casserole and the rolls she always makes; Cody did the cornbread dressing and the candied yams; I did the mashed potatoes, the cranberry sauce from scratch with orange zest, two kinds of pickles, and the dessert. Aunt Patty brought a sweet potato pie and a chocolate pecan pie. Aunt Linda brought a green salad with pomegranate seeds. The table looked like a magazine spread for the first three minutes and like a happy disaster forty-five minutes in.

The dessert I’d been practicing since the third week of October was a chocolate praline torte. Three thin chocolate cake layers baked in nine-inch round pans (two cups of flour, three-quarters cup of cocoa, the usual cake architecture — nothing fancy in the cake itself; the cake is the canvas), a praline filling made by caramelizing a cup and a half of sugar in a heavy pan to a deep amber, off the heat to stir in toasted Oklahoma pecans (one cup chopped, one cup whole), then pouring the praline onto a parchment-lined sheet pan and letting it harden so I could break it into shards and stir half the shards into a vanilla buttercream that went between the cake layers. The remaining shards went on top. The whole assembled cake gets a chocolate ganache glaze poured over while the ganache is still warm and pourable, and the glaze sets glossy and dark and runs down the sides in slow dripping panels. The torte serves twelve. There were exactly twelve people at the table. Two slices were left at the end of the night because Cody had three.

Aunt Patty asked Cody at dinner what culinary school he was starting in January, and he answered her steadily, no hesitation, the way a man answers about a job he’s been hired for and not the way a man answers about a thing he’s nervous about. He told her about TCC, the certificate, the spring schedule, the sous-chef trajectory. Aunt Patty nodded and said, “Cody-Bo, you always had hands.” Mama’s sister calls him Cody-Bo. He hasn’t been called Cody-Bo since he was about six years old and Aunt Patty was watching him on a Saturday in 1986. Hearing it again at the table while he was thirty-one was a small moment.

Iris pulled me aside before she left, by the front door while she was putting on her coat, and asked if I’d come up to her family’s place in Bristow for an overnight in December — her parents wanted to throw an anthology party for the two of us, just family, the second weekend of December, an early-Christmas-and-late-launch combined event with the eight pieces from the anthology read in their living room. I said yes. I asked Mama later that night, after everybody had left and the dishes were done and Cody had crashed on the couch with the news on. Mama said yes immediately. Cody, half-awake on the couch, said without opening his eyes, “Take her up there in the truck Saturday and stay over till Sunday. I’ll cover Sunday dinner here. You go.” That was the moment my brother became a brother again, after fourteen months of being something more institutional than a brother. He covered Sunday dinner.

Caramelize the sugar to deep amber, not light gold — that’s the praline difference. Here’s the three-layer build.

Chocolate Praline Torte

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 1 hr 5 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

• For the Praline:
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
• For the Cake:
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup hot strong brewed coffee
• For the Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting:
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Make the praline. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine brown sugar and heavy cream. Stir constantly until sugar dissolves and mixture just begins to bubble, about 2–3 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in pecans, and spread onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Let cool completely until hardened, then break into small pieces and set aside.
2. Preheat and prepare pans. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans, then line the bottoms with parchment paper.
3. Cream butter and sugar. In a large mixing bowl, beat softened butter and granulated sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in vanilla.
4. Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
5. Alternate wet and dry. Reduce mixer to low. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three additions, alternating with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Slowly stir in the hot coffee until just combined — batter will be thin.
6. Bake the layers. Divide batter evenly between the prepared pans. Bake for 30–35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.
7. Make the frosting. In a chilled bowl, beat heavy cream, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and vanilla on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form, about 3–4 minutes. Do not overbeat.
8. Assemble the torte. Place one cake layer on a serving plate. Spread a generous layer of chocolate whipped cream over the top. Scatter half of the praline pieces over the frosting. Place the second cake layer on top and frost the top and sides with the remaining whipped cream. Scatter remaining praline pieces over the top.
9. Chill before serving. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before slicing to allow the frosting to set. Store leftovers covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 520 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 32g | Carbs: 56g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 310mg