Chocolate Cake - Sweet Memories


I have to be honest and say that chocolate cake with chocolate frosting is not one of my adult favorites. It is still amazing but for me it holds more fond childhood memories.

We lost my father when I was young. It made my family unique and close. On rare occasions we would get chocolate cake for breakfast! Not just any chocolate cake. But chocolate cake with Dad's Fudge Frosting. The recipe I have is dated 1963. It's a stubborn little recipe. The frosting that is. It's temperamental and insists on just the right weather for perfection. It really doesn't matter even if it flops. It's still wonderful!

So on these days we would place our slice of cake in a bowl and pour milk over it. Best cereal EVER! I am also quite certain it made our Mom the Best Mom on Earth! Some years later (1983) my favorite comedian of all time, Bill Cosby, came out with "Himself." If you have never seen or listened to this it is a must at least once in your lifetime. It is a bunch of short stories about his life. One of which is about chocolate cake. As a family we were all sitting in the living room listening to the album. We were all laughing so hard. Then the skit came on about chocolate cake. Take a few minutes to watch it. It's worth your time. We were in hysterics over this skit. Only for us it was Mom is great!!



Lately I had been thinking about Dad's Fudge Frosting. I didn't want to make it to just put it on a boxed cake and I hadn't found a recipe I really liked. So this idea in my head about sour cream and it making everything taste better just wouldn't go away. So I began my search. I searched high and low and combined this and that and ended up with a near perfect chocolate cake. So good even Mikey likes it.

Chocolate Sour Cream Cake

    1 cup baking cocoa
    1 cup water
    1 cup butter, softened
    2 1/2 cups sugar
    4 eggs
    2 teaspoons vanilla extract
    3 cups all purpose flour
    2 teaspoons baking soda
    1/2 teaspoon baking powder
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1 cup sour cream

Frosting recipe below.

PRINT RECIPE

Using a two cup or larger glass measuring cup, add the 1 cup of water. Microwave about 2 minutes until water is boiling.

Smells wonderful, would NOT taste good.

Carefully add the cocoa and stir until mixed well; let it cool down while preparing everything else.


In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.



Add eggs, beat well. Beat in vanilla.


Add baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add flour to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream, beating well.



Add cocoa mixture; beat well scraping bowl often.


Pour into greased 10x15" cake pan. (If you do not have that large of a cake pan use smaller sizes filling no more than 2/3 full.) Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Do not over bake or it will get very dry. Cool completely.

Fudge Frosting
6 heaping tablespoons cocoa
3/4 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 c sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
6 tablespoons butter (no substitute)


In medium saucepan combine cocoa, sugar, milk and salt. Cook over medium high heat until it reaches the soft ball stage. 235F. Remove from heat and add vanilla and butter. Stir to combine.

Continue stirring frosting until it is cool and loses it's gloss. (Lift spoon with frosting in it and let it flow back into pan to cool faster.)

Working quickly frost cooled cake. The fudge sets up quickly once it's gloss is gone.As you can see I didn't work quite fast enough. I also think I could have used more frosting but that would probably be too much fudge.

On a side note, for some reason a few of my photos keep getting turned upside down or sideways and blogger doesn't have a way to flip them.

Linking up to:
My Mad Mind
Wordless Wednesday

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