Who can forget this classic Thanksgiving liquor cake recipe from First Lady Betty Ford? Our dearly departed Juli Weiner wrote this up several Thanksgivings ago, and we still reprint it every year, even though now she makes Harry Potter slash fiction photo-comics for Vanity Fair:
Here is one for the “chocoholics,” starring Betty Ford! It’s a Chocolate Icebox Dessert, and while it SOUNDS racist, that is just because of all the liquor.
Grab the following:
6 eggs
1 angel food cake
12 oz. chocolate chips
4 tb. of sugar
6 tb. of water
2 ts. vanilla
1 ts. salt
2 c. whipping cream
12 steps to dessert fun:
Get a cake pan, it should measure 9 x 9, so it should look like a square. Line it with “wax paper,” which people… buy.. at.. hardware stores (?). Cut up the angel food cake, use a spoon or plastic spatula or some dull edge—NO ONE LIKES A PROBLEM—and place it in the pan. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks until they have reached a Bellini-like coloring and consistency.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler over water. Ask someone what a double boiler is. Have that person boil the chocolate. Squeeze that person’s waist inappropriately, wink, and walk out of the room to lie down. Using your hands to make sure the floor is still there, come back to the kitchen and add sugar and water and mix, and then add in egg yolks too. Beat it awhile more, just beat it until you feel like you’re losing control, and then sit for awhile and come back and beat it some more and then let it cool. “Just be cool,” you’ll say aloud, “to the dessert.”
Add vanilla and salt, get the person who found the boiler and ask them why this is the single most complicated recipe on Earth. You’re not even HUNGRY. You just ate yesterday. Mix again, beat the egg whites and fold them into the chocolate and then add the whip cream, which you also should have beaten, because you have to do everything. Everything’s on your shoulders, all the time, just like this constant weight. Spread the frosting around the cake part and put it in the refrigerator overnight. Sleep slumped up against the refrigerator, so you’ll be able to tell if anything goes wrong.
{ 78 comments }
The photographic quality seems to say Hoover administration, were it not for those floor tiles, which place it squarely in 1974.
Parquet.
Oddly enough, means exactly the same thing in FRENCH!!!
Zut alors!!!!
Butter?
Oh, you're old.
The truly horrible interior design aesthetic of the 1970s explains volumes about why Betty drank so damn much. Is all I'm saying.
The horrible fashion aesthetics too. Was there anything that wasn't ugly in the 70s?
Certainly not Gerald.
Bianca Jagger and Grace Jones. Other than that, no.
The price of weed. Mmmm, 10 bucks an ounce. And I wasn't quite so shopworn either.
Hey Youngs, that photo obviously isn't from the 70s. That is not what either of them looked or dressed like in the 70s, and their kids were all teens or young adults by then.
Correctamundo, Kreskin. A quick trip to the Wikipedia places it in 1953. And I'll take the flower-print chairs, thank you.
12 steps to dessert fun:
She stole the recipe from AA!
Gerald wasn't bad looking. (I think this means that I need to either drink a lot less or a lot more!)
He also played a mean game of basketball
<a href="http://www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/images/ww2-4…” target=”_blank”>www.archives.gov/research/ww2/photos/images/ww2-4…
Link fail. Not that it matters in this case.
Try this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gerald_Ford_pla...
Better linky thingy or STFU! Or not. I'm probably not gonna get all worked up about not seeing GF play basketball when I am QUITE sure that my mother has "SP's Alaska" recorded on DVR for all of us to see on Indian-killin Day. Dear Baby Jesus with a rifle – just shoot me before tomorrow!!
Sounds to me like the fuel pump on your car should crap out about 18 hours from now.
Their kids are nice looking, too. Steven Ford is/was an actor and was on the soap opera "The Young and the Restless" for a few years.
And drove a Subaru, if my recollection of 1970s TV ads serves me correctly.
A diet steeped in Chocolate Icebox cake is why, when Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves, he was found delicious.
"Just beat it"?
Are you sure this isn't Michael Jackson's recipe?
If so, where's the Jesus Juice?
"Gerald was never again allowed to hold the children after the prior Thanksgiving, when GF confused the infant with a football and started throwing it around the backyard." It was a simpler time.
The big problem was when he pretended he made a touchdown and spiked the "ball."
Leave Trig out of this!
A nice reminder that in ancient times before I was alive, a Republican could be President and not be horrible and evil, but kind of OK and not all that bad.
We have a nice old family photo where I'm a little kid wearing a "Nixon Now" button.
I don't think Sorosbot was referring to him.
No, not Nixon; just Gerry and Ike. Bush II though does make Dick look decent by comparison.
C'mon. After that pardon thing, Ford and Nixon are forever joined at the hip.
Perhaps you were just pimping for Penthouse pin-up turned photographer Emma Nixon.
They needed the nice ones to pardon the horrible evil ones. The modern GOP has since given up that pretense and allows the horrible evil ones to pardon each other.
Sheesh. Next time I'll read ALL the comments, first.
It helped if his wife had a clinic named after her. (But if life is a cabaret, old chum, how did Liza Minelli end up there?)
I call bullshit on this recipe. Betty wouldn't be caught dead submitting anything that didn't include at least 4 phenobarbs and a bottle of gin.
What, no Whitecastle burgers in the mix?
I think I'll pass, then.
Is this the dish where Gerald Ford took a forkfull of it and smeared it all over his forehead?
You missed the last step:
"Question yourself as to whether Jerry really believes that Oswald act alone."
When do we get the recipe for Laura Bush's roadkill pie?
I wish Ms Juli had written the variation recipe for using a round cake pan.
Agreed! The photo makes the recipe square enough.
And now you know Betty's secret about Gerry and Airplane Stairs?
That could make a great band name, at least for the band. Get totally loaded, go to the gig, and after the lights come up just fall all over the stage. If one of the band members had Julie's legs no one would notice.
I think Joe Cocker already tried this.
I thought that was Belushi.
True, but Joe didn't have Julie's legs.
She does look rather fine, doesn't she?
Graydon Carter is so wasted on Xanax & Scotch he has no idea who works for him, so Juli's been skirting detection.
Weiner is dead?
Not to mention the karmic damage to Wonkette staff alumni from just being snarky about every fucken thing. First meeting at the new job: "Are you trying to bore us to death with this Powerpoint, or just torture us slowly, with the stoopid? Also."
What's with Gerry and Betty's unAmerican small dining table? And each of those kids better have their own bathroom or I'm calling "European-style Socialism" in that house.
This recipe is not authentic "chocolate icebox cake." This
http://aliceqfoodie.blogspot.com/2008/04/that-fam...
…is closer. But it should be slathered w/whipped cream on the outside, tilted on its side, and sliced on the bias.
Make it all the time. Cheat and use Dream whip, laced with whatever liqueur haven't drunk yet.
Kids love it. Makes em quiet.
Our dearly departed Juli Weiner wrote this up several Thanksgivings ago, and we still reprint it every year
Great! Now all I need to do is play "Alice's Restaurant " and all of my Thanksgiving traditions will be completed.
Yes, nothing says American Thanksgiving like "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
I heard this twice last Sunday on 2 different radio stations.
For the Muslim communists:
6 eggs
1 angel food cake
340 g chocolate chips
50 g of sugar
90 mL of water
10 mL vanilla
6 g salt
480 mL whipping cream
Be sure to chant "Death to America!" while doing the aforementioned beating. Add the tears of the baby Jesus to taste.
(Why, yes, I am bored.)
We do this every year! It's a lot of fun!
It's even more fun with tequila!
I'm glad this contains no liquor, since otherwise it'd be a terrible waste of perfectly good booze.
I like to believe mine is just hibernating, all year long…
When the rest of the family is thanking the lord for various career and family happiness bestowed upon them this year, I'll be thanking Sky Daddy for Wonkette and these Thanksgiving recipes.
Kitchen microphones compliments of J. Edgar Hoover.
That's it. I'm coming out and telling the world. I love Weiner.
If you have some of elviouslyqueer's Betty Ford phenobarb it is possible you can stay passed out till next week.
I've met the kid sitting in the chair. Nice guy. Loves football. It would appear his parents did a good job raising him. And Gerald didn't send me to Vietnam when it collapsed like Nixon would have, so I've gotta love him.
Eat enough of this and you'll pardon Richard Nixon, too.
That looks like Jimmy Hoffa before he got those worry lines, from worrying about real people.
Juli is looking kinda hot these days in a Hermione Grangeresque way.
Do we spend Thanksgiving with the same family?
"Problem"… What problem? I'm not seeing a problem…
How very Revolutionary Road. I want to go back in time and abort myself just looking at that picture.
But where's the Sterno?
No Betty Ford recipe is complete without it.
That is a photo of hell. Those are some of the most miserable looking people I've ever seen. They're all dressed up for the "empty plate" family dinner. Forever.
You should eat that cake with your Republican cloth coat on.
When Jerry first got elected to Congress, the Fords moved to Shirlington….those little garden apartments just south of Glebe Road. Looks like that's where the picture was taken.
I'm Jack's age – and have never been involved in partisan politics – but have had the pleasure of meeting Jerry and Betty and all of the kids. Not a bit of phoniness or pretension in any of them. Good people.
I used the "busted water heater" for last year's Christmas party. I think I'll just walk in and state, "Hello everyone, Sarah Palin is a cunt and I want to watch football. Where's the pea salad?"
"Sarah Palin is a cunt and I want to watch football."
That's going to be my next tattoo.
I usually arrive later than most of the gang at my mom's and say loudly, "Geez, you guys. How come you don't have the game on?"
All the men in the room make a relived sigh and join me in front of the tube. They're all too polite to be the one to be stone cold just turnin' on the TV; so they're counting on me. It's a family tradition.
that's a lot of pressure. who are these "men"? harry reid?
Guys married to my sisters. 'nuf said.
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