In Honour of Mayday

Happy May Day to all, especially to those graduating seniors. The following is in your honour.

If Bryn Mawr were BPAL perfume

Parade Night: A splash of cold, clear water; chocolate, and candies; a faint hint of tea and the pages of ancient tomes--all overlaid by fall leaves.

Lantern Night: A cold, fresh scent. Laurel leaves give a nod to Ancient Greece. Singed mittens.

Hell Week: A whiff of brimstone and pondweed gives way to secondary notes of wine, sweat, and flowers.

May Day: A base of freshly laundered linen and saltwater. Strawberries, bread, and roses.

Chocolate-Orange-Guinness Cake

This cake is marvelous; rushthatspeaks and I made it this afternoon. Make sure you get the right kind of Guinness; ask the people at the liquor store. 1/2 cup is about half a bottle.

Cake Ingredients:
- 1 stick butter, room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups soft dark brown sugar
- 2 cups self-rising flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- 2 rounded tbsp Hershey's Cocoa
- 1 orange, grated
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup Guinness Stout

Icing Ingredients:
- 1 stick butter, softened
- 1/2 to 2 cups confectioner's sugar
- grated rind and juice of 1 orange

Preheat oven to 375° F.

Grease 2 8- to 9-inch cake pans.

Cake:
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa into a bowl. Add the orange rind to the creamed butter and beat in the egss, one at a time, including a sponful of the measured flour mixture with each one and beating well between additions.

Gently mix in the Guinness, a tablespoonful at at time, including another spoonful of flour with each addition. If there's any flour left over [ed: there was], fold it gently into mix; blend thoroughly without overbeating.

Divide the mixture between the cake pans, smooth down, and put the cakes into the center of the preheated oven.

Reduce the heat to moderate (350° F) and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the cakes are springy to the touch and shrinking slightly in the pans. Turn out and cool on wire rack.

Icing:
Cream the softened buttr and icing sugar together thoroughly, then blend in the grated orange rind and enough juice to make an icing that is soft enough to spread.

When the cakes are cold, use half the icing to sandwich them together, and spread the rest on top.

Servings: 4 [ed: this lies about the servings. We also grated dark chocolate to put on top for decoration. The icing is delicious. The cake does not taste at all like chocolate. If you want something chocolate, add dark chocolate into the batter.]