Cinnamon Chocolate Cake

Good news: Clay gets Christmas leave. Two days. Not two weeks — two days. December 24th and 25th. He arrives late on the 23rd and leaves on the 26th. Forty-eight hours of my son in this house, in this kitchen, at this table. I will not waste a single one of those hours on sleep. I will cook and feed and be present and store every second the way Betty stores pawpaw pulp: carefully, in the cold, for later.

Amber is coming home for Christmas too — three days, between clinical rotations. She's exhausted. The ER is hard on her body and harder on her heart. She told me last week about a patient — a young soldier, home on leave, who came into the ER after a car accident. He was fine — broken arm, concussion, nothing life-threatening — but when Amber saw the uniform, she thought of Clay, and she had to leave the room for two minutes to compose herself. She said "I was professional. I came back and I did my job. But for two minutes, he was Clay." I said "I know." I know because every young soldier is Clay to me now. Every uniform. Every story. Every news report from Afghanistan. They're all Clay.

For Christmas prep, I'm going all in: turkey (brined), ham (glazed), cornbread dressing (right, always right now), mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potato casserole (marshmallow, for Betty's ghost because Betty isn't coming), rolls, three pies, and every type of candy I can produce in the next two weeks. If Clay gets forty-eight hours, those forty-eight hours are going to contain enough food to last him through whatever comes next.

This week's recipe: chocolate chess pie. A variation of the plain chess pie I made for Connie on Mother's Day — same custard base but with cocoa powder and melted chocolate added. Three eggs, one and a half cups sugar, half cup cocoa powder, two ounces melted semi-sweet chocolate, a third cup melted butter, a small can of evaporated milk, a teaspoon of vanilla. Beat it all together. Pour into an unbaked crust. Bake at 350 for forty minutes. The top cracks like a brownie and the inside is rich and fudgy and dense and it's basically a brownie that decided to become a pie, which is an upgrade by any measure.

The pie is for Christmas. Everything is for Christmas. Everything is for Clay. The kitchen is a factory of love operating at maximum capacity for a forty-eight-hour window of having my son home, and I will produce enough love to fill every second and overflow into the seconds after he leaves, when the house goes quiet again and the leftovers last too long and the chair is empty again. But not yet. Not for two weeks. Two weeks of prep. Forty-eight hours of feast. That's the math. That's the deal. I'll take it.

The chocolate chess pie is already locked in — that’s Clay’s pie, full stop — but forty-eight hours demands more than one dessert on the table, and when I started thinking about what else could carry the same rich, deeply chocolatey warmth, this Cinnamon Chocolate Cake is exactly where my mind went. The cinnamon does something unexpected to chocolate: it deepens it, makes it feel less like a treat and more like something that has always been in this kitchen, something that belongs here. That’s what I need this Christmas — food that feels like it belongs, like Clay belongs, like this house is exactly the place everyone should be.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, divided
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, divided
1 cup water
2 large eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla extract, divided
1/3 cup whole milk
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan and set aside.
Combine dry ingredients. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, granulated sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and 1/4 cup of the cocoa powder until evenly blended.
Melt butter mixture. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine 3/4 cup of the butter and the water. Heat, stirring, until butter is fully melted and the mixture just begins to simmer. Pour immediately over the dry ingredients and stir to combine.
Add wet ingredients. Beat in eggs, buttermilk, and 1 tsp vanilla until the batter is smooth and no dry streaks remain. Batter will be thin — that’s right.
Bake. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake 30 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs. Do not overbake.
Make the poured frosting. About five minutes before the cake comes out, melt the remaining 1/4 cup butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Whisk in remaining 1/4 cup cocoa powder and the milk until smooth. Remove from heat and whisk in powdered sugar and remaining 1 tsp vanilla until glossy and pourable. Add an extra tablespoon of milk if needed to loosen.
Frost while hot. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, pour the warm frosting evenly over the top. It will settle into the surface as both cool. Allow to cool at least 20 minutes before cutting — or serve warm if you can’t wait.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cinnamon Chocolate Cake — Baking Love Into Every Hour Before He Comes Home