I can’t take a lot of credit for the awesome cake that was made at my house this past weekend. That all goes to my mom, a woman who’s taught me pretty much everything I know about baking.
She was looking for a dessert to make for a football party we had last weekend, and her eye caught a picture of a delicious looking cake on the back of an old Cuisine at Home magazine we had lying around.
The cake recipe itself didn’t interest her much, but the recipe for the Glossy Chocolate Frosting sounded interesting. It had a rich dark chocolate taste with a hint of coffee. It’s probably one of the best chocolate frostings I have ever tasted.
For the cake, Mom combined two recipes. One was from a Taste of Home cookbook and the other was from the back of her Hershey’s cocoa powder box. She took the best parts of both recipes and mingled the flavors and amounts effortlessly. She was especially drawn to the use of cinnamon and buttermilk in the Taste of Home recipe but chose to use butter instead of shortening.
The consistency of the cake was amazing. It was moist and dense. Similar to the delicious chocolate bundt cake she makes that I shared with you last year. With the denseness of the cake and the richness of the frosting, it could seriously be a meal on its own. In fact I had a piece of this cake for lunch yesterday, but I wouldn’t recommend that on a regular basis.
The recipes and instructions are below with a few pointers about making it from my mom.
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 3/4 cup baking cocoa powder
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
- 1 cup water
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 2 tsp. vanilla
- 1 stick of unsalted butter (8 tbsp.)
- 1-1/2 cup of sugar
- 1-1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
- pinch of salt
- 1-1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream
- 1/4 cup of sour cream
- 1 tsp. instant coffee granules
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350* F. Grease and flour two 9 in. round pans (if you’re going to make a layered cake). Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl.
- In a small sauce pan bring water, butter, and cocoa to boil, stirring constantly, and remove from heat. Add this to the dry mixture and mix.
- In a small mixing bowl beat eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla and add it to the rest of the ingredients. Mix well.
- Pour into prepared pans and bake 30-35 mins, until a toothpick at the center comes out clean.
- Cool for 10 mins. in pans, then run a small knife around the edges of the pan and turn out onto wire cooling racks. Cool completely, tops down.
- Invert one layer onto a cake plate and frost the top with the icing (instructions below). Stack the other layer on top of the icing and ice the top and sides.
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.
- Stir in sugar, cocoa, and salt. The mixture should be thick and grainy.
- Combine the heavy cream, sour cream, and instant coffee granules in a bowl and mix until smooth. If you want, you can ground up the instant coffee in a mortar and pestle first so it will mix in smoothly. This is not required though.
- Gradually add the cream mixture to the chocolate mixture until it is blended and smooth.
- Cook on the stove until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is smooth and hot to the touch, about 6-8 minutes. Do not let it boil.
- Take it off the heat and add the vanilla. Cool the icing at room temperature until is it spreadable, about 2-3 hours. If the frosting is too runny, put it in the fridge for a bit. If you choose to chill it and it gets too hard, warm it in the microwave on high for 20-second intervals or leave it at room temperature for a while to soften it.
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Wow! This looks like a chocolate dream cake. 🙂 This cake and chocolate mousse, chocolate heaven for me. 🙂 I will have to save this.