The other day, an old friend of mine asked for a chocolate cake recipe for her daughter’s birthday, which happens to fall this week. Since she also keeps Passover and works outside the home, I wanted to make her life as easy as possible.

The key to making this cake work lies with two factors: not overbaking it (it will dry out) and putting in lots of chocolate chips!

Confession time: I’m really looking forward to the end of this holiday so that I can focus on Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo recipes, not to mention the glory of the upcoming summer.

I used to hate the classic joke that goes something like this: what are the three best parts about being a teacher? June, July and August! Yeah, I hated that joke because I’ve always loved teaching and it was based on the assumption that we hate a majority of our year.

Loving summer is still a no-brainer, though. The days are lazy, the nights are long, and there’s frozen yogurt. And margaritas. I think we can all agree that those are wonderful things.

Before we get there, though, there’s chocolate cake. That’s also a wonderful thing.

This is a quick one-bowl recipe. You might have noticed that this week, I’m using a lot of potato starch. If you have no clue what that is, it’s a thickener (much like cornstarch) that subs in for flour. It’s very popular on Passover, but some recipes require it that don’t have anything to do with Passover. You can usually buy potato starch at kosher food stores, and it’s a great GF option. Or you can always sub in flour here if you’re not in the mood to be a GF person.

It’s the end of the week and there’s just a little more celebrating for us to do who observe the eight-day holiday to its fullest. I’ll see you all next week for some May recipe love!

My first alcoholic drink of choice as a young woman was (this is embarrassing to admit) a Kahlua and cream. It was so delicious, like a spiked coffee drink. I thought it was heaven.

And though my tastes have refined over time, I still love me some Kahlua. And in a rich chocolate cake, who can say no? One of our interns gave me this recipe last year, and I’ve been meaning to share it with you ever since. It’s time! And to make it even better, I made a thick Kahlua glaze for the top.

Yesterday, I lost it. I admit it. We had a sudden ant infestation about a week ago, and our exterminator is unavailable until the 21st of this month. I think we need a new exterminator.

That aside, we did everything you do when ants invade. We sprayed everywhere inside and out, scoured our pantry for open food items, and washed dishes the second they got dirty. The very second.

When I was off doing something else, Kenny threw away the baking soda. And didn’t tell me he’d thrown it away. And he didn’t replace it.

Cue this past weekend. Some people are weekend warriors when it comes to working out. I’m a baking warrior on the weekends, because that’s the only time I have. The work week is taken up with my day job. So I typically stock up on Friday and make sure that the house is ready for the onslaught of flour and melted chocolate.

There I was, mixing away serenely, when I reached up into what even my kids call “the baking cabinet” to get the baking soda. My hand closed on nothing. It took about ten seconds of me staring at the blank space in disbelief to realize what happened.

Mean Mir came right out. I went to my husband and hissed (yes, it was a hiss), “Tell me you didn’t throw away the baking soda without replacing it. Please tell me that’s not what happened.”

That poor man. I could see the realization dawn in his eyes. Wow, she’s really pissed. He apologized. I went off on a rant about how ants don’t even like baking soda. He apologized again. I used some choice language.

Then I calmed down, stuck the bowl of the cookie dough I was mixing up in the fridge until we could rectify the Baking Soda Debacle of 2015, and went to apologize to Kenny. Even though I feel my meltdown was kind of justified.

All’s well now, except that the ants are still sort of among us. My son told me proudly that he shook one off his hand this morning in the bathroom without even crying. I’m so grossed out, but at least the little pests aren’t in the kitchen. Because if they were, this incredible cake would definitely constitute a problem.

Like many great cakes, this starts with a mix. That mix gets quickly tricked out with all sorts of goodies, most importantly Kahlua. And can you taste it in the final product? Absolutely. Especially because the glaze (which is heated, so this cake won’t give you a buzz) also has Kahlua. If that still makes you nervous, sub vanilla in for the Kahlua in the glaze. But if you can, leave it there. It’s so good.

The cake is also loaded to the max with chocolate chips, which make anything better. When your house is taken up with little pests, you need some Kahlua cake in your life to take the edge off, especially so that other people in the house don’t wind up getting hissed at. Remember that next time someone does something you don’t like!

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Every year, I bake my own birthday fantasy treat. When you’re the resident cake baker, nobody bakes them for you. It falls to me to make the festive sugar. But that’s okay, because I get to let my imagination run wild.

This cake is like a giant Reese’s peanut butter cup. A peanut butter core is sandwiched between my favorite chocolate cake (it’s gluten-free but superior to any chocolate cake I’ve ever baked, and that’s a LOT of cakes) and then frosted with peanut butter frosting. And of course, the whole cake is topped off with more Reese’s peanut butter cups. It’s the best candy in the world, my friends!

Today I got my welcome back letter in the mail from the high school where I work. Don’t get me wrong: I love teaching and it’s exciting to go back every year. But could everyone just not bother me until I have to go back? I don’t want to see ads for back to school items, and I definitely don’t want a mailing from my work full of meeting agendas. Thinking about meetings when I’m at the beach soaking up the rays is just so not cool.

Before you start thinking that I’m a spoiled you-know-what who gets two whole months off to while away, I have to explain the argument that I have with Kenny on a regular basis. From my point of view, a teacher’s summer vacation is pretty much a furlough. In other words, we’re not paid for those two months, and it’s not voluntary. Granted, I know very few teaching jobs that span an entire school year. Kenny argues that if teachers were to work those extra two months and be paid the same amount, our salaries would still be good. I think that we would have to make an extra two months’ worth of money, because then we’d be 12-month employees, not 10-month. And it’s not like teachers aren’t underpaid anyway.

So what this comes down to is that when you think you’re seeing a lot of teachers on vacation, several are working extra jobs or cutting back on expenses to compensate for the absent paychecks. It’s just something to consider. I know very few teachers who don’t have summer gigs to help everyone stay afloat.

Back when I was a rookie teacher with no money, I actually kept my expenses outside of basic needs to $40 a week. I still don’t know how I did that, but I remember budgeting out a movie, or a candy bar, or if I saved up a bit more, a cool vest. It was easier to do that than to teach summer school. But back then, I was young and energetic. Now, I got nothin’.

Except THIS CAKE. I had to put that in caps because, well, it’s a crazy awesome sugar bomb punch. I have a pretty high tolerance for desserts that other people consider rich, but this one packs a lot of intensity. Half a slice got me through a few hours.

You can bet that on my birthday I’ll be pulling this cake out of the freezer for partying galore. After all, I still have some summer vacation left, even if it’s dwindling fast. While the sun shines and the seagulls caw (is that what seagulls do?), let the celebrations begin!

I’m all about easy baking, but there’s no way to cheat a layer cake. Steps have to be followed. Still, making it as easy as possible is ideal, and this chocolate cake is three things: incredible, simple, and gluten-free.

If you’re a doubter, you need to try this. I served this cake at my daughter’s birthday party to a group of people who either openly or covertly believe that gluten-free baking is crap. This cake proved them all wrong.

It’s funny how people are so quick to form judgments and hold onto them, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Our country’s laws might indicate that somebody is innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn’t protect people from ordinary, day-to-day judgment.

We all do it, of course. We put people into categories: soccer mom, yuppie, player, punk. These first impressions usually stick the hardest, especially because we form internal judgments of people we don’t know, whether we’re standing behind them in line at Starbucks or passing them angrily on the road.

Every now and then, we’re lucky (or unlucky) enough to get to know someone better, and then we can undo some of that initial judgment.  But that first impression doesn’t ever fully go away, not with people or with cake.

Still, I’m asking you to keep an open mind here when I tell you that this chocolate cake is the best one I’ve ever made, gluten-free or otherwise. It’s dense, fudgy, moist, and puts other more popular cake recipes to shame. Even better, the cake can be whipped up in one bowl by hand.

To make this recipe, I doubled the base (which will make one bundt-sized cake). Out of that, I got three nine-inch cake rounds and enough batter for an 8-inch square cake. Of all the baked goods in my house that were around for my daughter’s birthday weekend, that little square cake went the fastest.

And the rest of it went into this My Little Pony-themed cake, which my daughter loved. See?

If you’ve judged gluten-free desserts too quickly, try again. This one will change the way you look at the world of GF dessert!