Chocolate Reconsidered

In the spirit of sharing, the Boston Globe has a proud tradition of asking readers to submit items. In the 1950s, they published this cookbook devoted to chocolate. The recipes actually sound pretty good, but too bad there wasn't a budget to hire a decent illustrator.

These illustrations are just plain weird and confusing. My brain wants to confirm that the item on the cover is a cake server, and not a spoon or a badly placed perfume bottle. It just can't make that work.

I particularly like the Cambridge Chocolate Cake recipe, where the illustrator decided that a good interpretation would include a cake with a mortar board on top. Apparently even backed goods get a top education in Cambridge.

The towering cake below is part of a fevered dream of the Devil. Of course, he is sleeping on a bed supported by spears with a very thin and saggy mattress. However, this doesn't stop Satan from dreaming of his favorite dessert, multilayered cake of barbed wire topped with kayaks. Yum!