Me: Lalala…
Email box: Cake recipe? Cake recipe?
Me: O_o

Chocolate cake
Okay so the cake itself I got from here.
Two notes. First, I didn’t have buttermilk so I added 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar to regular milk and allowed it to clot for about 10 minutes. Second, this is a lot of cake. It worked for my purposes, because I wanted to make a statement, but this makes 3 pans, and you could probably half the recipe and make 2 thinner ones without two much trouble.
Strawberry filling
2 cups frozen strawberries
1/2 cup sugar or so
1 Tbsp lemon/lime juice – I just kind of squirted it in there
1 cup water
3 Tbsp corn starch
Mix cornstarch with 1/2 cup water. Place strawberries, sugar and the remaining water into a pan. Add lemon juice. bring to boil over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon. Just as it starts to bubble, add the cornstarch water, and then cook it, stirring, until it bubbles and looks thick enough.
There are many versions of this. I wanted mine to have uniform consistency and I wanted it to be thicker. No matter how much cornstarch you add, it will still run, so when you are frosting the cake, you need to make a ring of butter cream around the edge and spoon the strawberry filling in there. I also pipe a little more buttercream on top of it to “seal” it before slapping more cake on there.
Swiss Meringue Chocolate Buttercream
This explains different buttercreams. I used her recipe which can be found here.
I followed it exactly, except I melted 2/3 cup Hershey’s chocolate chips in the microwave, let it cool, and then stirred it in at the last minute.
She explains the process very well, so just a few notes.
Grease is the enemy here, so I usually put a tiny bit of vinegar on a paper towel and wipe down the bowl where egg white will be.
If you don’t have a double boiler and making it work with a mixing bowl inside the pot, make sure the bowl is stable. You can clump up some aluminum foil and set it on the bottom of your pot with water to keep the bowl from touching the pot’s bottom.
I would suggest using hand mixer on low speed for the boiling part because it takes a long time with a whisk. I work out with hand weights a lot and my arm got a bit tired, so if you arm gets tire after brushing your hair, deploy hand mixer. PS. Don’t burn yourself.
Make sure butter is mixed in before adding more. There will come a point where it looks like you couldn’t possibly mix more butter in. You can.
Assembly
Cake
Ring of buttercream around the edge
Strawberry filling
Thin layer of buttercream spread over the strawberry
Cake
Ring of buttercream around the edge
Strawberry filling
Cake
Buttercream
Yay!
Yum! Thanks for the links and the notes. I have actually started writing in my cookbooks and internet recipes notes when I change stuff. Makes it easier when someone asks for a recipe. I have a tendency to change things.
I often wonder if the people who write the recipes actually do it exactly the way it’s written. Baking tends to be more persnickety than “cooking” but still, there’s always room to tweak things as we see here.
Me too! It drives my adult daughters nuts! My youngest always demands that I write down the changes I make so it will turn out the way I make it. I mostly do this with cooking, not baking. One recipe, in particular, chicken fricassee with dumplings, has so little water in the original recipe that it ends up being way too little since the dumplings are like sponges drinking all the sauce so I more than doubled the amount, plus put the cooked chicken to the side instead of putting the dumpling mixture on top… it takes a total of 30 minutes to bake dumplings… end result following original recipe, very dry chicken and a crusty layer of gravy/sauce on the bottom.
Most of my cooking is without recipes like chili, beef in dill gravy, chicken a la King… it is hard to tell others how to do something when no measuring is involved.
Wow – Sounds totally yummy.
Think I gained two pounds just reading and fantasizing about it.
Thanks for sharing!
I love swiss meringue buttercream, it’s my favorite ????????. That cake looks super moist, yummy!!
Mmm yum!! The recipe is very similar to the one I use, which is also uses buttermilk. I have to be careful not to make it too often. Cause I will just eat the whole lot if I can.
Thank you! ????
Ooh…
Thank you! I might have to give this a try. Seems like a great isolation dessert to eat while watching The Great British Baking Show.
I think the “19” in COVID-19 means the number of pounds we’ll gain eating this cake alone; it’s so rich and glorious!
+1
+1
Thank you for this, it will be a celebration cake, and Mom is turning 89 with no chance of a party this year.
The cake will be a most delicous treat and at 89, she can eat what she wants, when she wants!
Barbara
I still want cake. Damnit.
Yes, yes, so do I!
Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Cake
with
Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Frosting
Just sayin’… (^:^)
Nice! Thanks!
I volunteer to taste test and gain the ten lbs. Yummy sounding. Thank you. Plus by sharing, you cut the calories in half. Everyone knows that rule. ????
You can also try eating it directly from the serving plate or eating it while standing up, those also subtract calories 😉
Emergency Cake!!! (For when you need a cake and it’s an emergency!)
Ingredients:
1 3/4 c. Flour
1 c. Sugar
1/4 tsp. Salt
2 1/2 tsp. Baking powder
1/3 c. Shortening/Butter
1 c. Milk
2 tsp. Vanilla (or other flavoring).
Mix everything except the vanilla in a mixer for 2 – 3 minutes.
Add vanilla (or other flavoring) and mix for another 2 – 3 minutes.
Put into a greased 8×8 or 9×9 pan.
Bake 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
Now this looks like something I can do, very lacking in cooking skills.
Thank you.
You know bakers may describes the recipes, but they don’t tell you the nit and gritty details. They don’t even tell you how to make your cake look good. Look up, cake decorators on YouTube. If you want to make your cake to have pretty side. You could try getting a banding wheel. It’s about $20 and bakers use it to do the top and sides of there cakes. Ex. Smoothing, icing styles. Hope this helps.
If you haven’t already you check out Man about Cake. His videos are awesome and his cakes are sooooo pretty! But I would also watch it because he’s very good at teaching good techniques to use for cake decorating.
Please don’t hunt me down and shoot me if it doesn’t work. When a recipe calls for buttermilk and I don’t have any… I use plain yogurt thinned down a bit with water. It has the same chemical properties as buttermilk (IE it’s acidic) and I ALWAYS have plain yogurt.
I have always preferred a swiss meringue buttercream over the powdered sugar frosting (even the butter one), it not as sweet.
And you thought we were bad before the quarantine, lol. Now we are crying out for mental stimulation. And baked goods. My dad is sad that I am going back to work because I won’t have as much time to bake. He gets half the weekly loaf of banana bread because he always throws away his bananas and I started taking them. It kept me sane.
Thanks for the recipe!
“There will come a point where it looks like you couldn’t possibly mix more butter in. You can.”
“There will come a point where it looks like you couldn’t possibly mix more butter in. You can.”
I’m pretty sure this is a brilliant summary of baking, or maybe just life, in America. LOL. I’m now excited and lacking sufficient butter to undertake this endeavor. But it’s on my to-do list!!
Looks and sounds yummy. If you want to switch up the vanilla with the chocolate, use orange extract. Chocolate and orange is very yummy. 🙂
Me? I’ll stick with the boxed cake mix. As I said in a previous post, I gave up on layer cakes a long time ago. More power to anyone who likes making layer cakes from scratch.
I stick with cake mixes also. People were shocked that my bomb cake was not made by scratch… it’s a lot of work even using boxed mixes. I use white cake, but use whole eggs, and chocolate cake made in 13X9 pans, cool. With a knife, divide them into two layers. I whip a quart of whipping cream with a large box of vanilla instant pudding adding a little milk at the end for a less thick consistency. Bottom is one layer of chocolate cake, then some whipped cream mixture with a layer of sliced bananas and a little more mixture, second chocolate layer, then WC mixture, a layer of white cake, WC mixture, sliced strawberries, before putting other white cake layer, I spread strawberry glaze on bottom and put on top of strawberries… glaze to strawberries. I frost the whole cake with Cool Whip which makes it lighter and is delicious! We like thick layers of the whipped cream mixture between layers… it is so good with the fresh fruit! Once in a while I may do one or the other, chocolate or white, so then only a small box of vanilla instant pudding and half the heavy whipping cream is needed along with one, not two regular sized Cool Whip. Sorry this is so jumbled! It helps putting layers on waxed paper for easier assembling.
I am amazed that the cake does not use butter. I have always started a cake by creaming the butter. What sort of oil do you use in cakes? I only have olive oil and that would taste too strong.
I’m in a similar situation and would like to know too. I have olive oil, peanut oil, and coconut oil.
Vegetable oil or Canola oil. They are considered neutral oils since they don’t have any smell or taste to them. If you want a coconut taste to the cake use coconut oil. ????
Thank you. Coconut oil it is then, since I don’t have and won’t buy vegetable oil. 🙂
I buy very light tasting olive oil. It’s basically tasteless and odorless. 🙂
I do too at Walmart!
I’ve always just used the equivalent amount of unsweetened applesauce to replace oil in baking. Oil just tastes acrid to me & this works just as well.
Peanut, Canola or the very cheapest non-virgin olive oil. Like, $5/gallon olive oil. I do my cooking with this — it’s still a monounsaturated fat — and have a bottle of very lovely (and expensive) extra virgin for things that a) want the flavor and b) don’t involve sautéeing, which breaks down the high-quality oil almost immediately (if it DOESN’T start to smoke within 30 secs on medium high heat, you’ve been ripped off).
Oh can I please have a small slice? That looks decadent & delicious!!!
Ya know…? I got tired just reading the instructions. I just wanna buy the cake! Where can I find that cake? I’d pay big bucks for that one. Big. Bucks. I’m jes’ saying…
(LOL don’t judge me. I’m a reader, not a baker!)
I have a chocolate cake recipe similar. It is my most requested cake. Throw some chocolate mousse in the middle and ganache on top and people (outside my son who hates chocolate – go figure) go crazy.
The only major difference is that instead of water, I use strong brewed coffee (that has cooled). Or sometimes I throw in some espresso powder from King Arthur Flour (if I have that in stock).
This sounds like fun to do with my daughter who is the better baker than me. Thanks for sharing it and I love everyone sharing their ideas. Took pictures of those too! Cheers.
Bookmarked this for future reference, thank you^^
I have a sweet tooth and often eager to explore the slice cake in nearby bakery xD
Yum! I’m off tomorrow and plan on spending the day gardening and baking. Chocolate is in my very near future.
I learned a lot about buttercreme this morning.
To add another form: A lot of german cakes have buttercream that is a mixture of pudding and butter.
The mostly known is Frankfurter Kranz, which has a cream made of vanille pudding and butter, but other use chocolate pudding.
Yummy… ????
I never have buttermilk, so my favorite part of the recipe actually was how to use vinegar and regular milk to improvise. This sounds like the kind of tip I would expect to see in one of the Edge novels! Thanks.
It’s 3am and now I WANT CAKE!!!
Thank you
Thank you so much for sharing the recipe and your suggestions!! You are so awesome to us!
Dried buttermilk in the fridge. It lasts forever and it’s there when you need it! I also recently discovered the wonder of powdered milk. I don’t keep much dairy in my house (I don’t eat much) but for some reason I was in a mood for pudding. So I took my powdered milk and added that to pudding mix then shake-shake-shake in my drink mix bottle and instant pudding. The shaking put me in mind of campfire pudding cones (shook in a sports cooler, no judging it was a 90s thing) so I ordered mini sample cones and oh my lord I did not need to know I could do this. I have ordered 3 different pudding flavors to date!
Thank you!
Thanks! It’s my birthday today and I am fairly morose because it is also 7 weeks since my mom died.
Now to send it to my DH.
((Hugs)) I’m sorry for your loss. I hope the good memories can outweigh the sadness for you today.
Thank you. That looks so yummy.
Thank you. I probably won’t even attempt this cake my grandchildren call me “the grandma who can’t frost/decorate cakes”. Yeah, their other grandmother can.
I had one grandmother who could really sew and the other who knew how to knit and crochet. Between the two, I was very blessed by their talents!
Wow! Just wow!
????
Thank you! I have an outstanding white cake recipe, but have been on the look for chocolate. You know – cuz you need both for the family 🙂
This chocolate cake recipe is my go-to recipe every time I bake for a birthday. It’s delicious and moist and so, so chocolate-y. I’m glad we agree on that.
I bet there’s never a crumb left every time you make that cake, ’cause chocolate and strawberries are droolworthy…
I make chocolate covered strawberries using the Dulce chocolate hard shell… It comes in a container you put in the microwave to melt the chocolate wafers… I usually find it at the produce section of the grocery store… I dip the washed and dried strawberries in the melted chocolate and place on a sheet of wax paper, sometimes I take out the leaves by using a straw, bottoms up aiming for the top leaves. It hardens when it cools and is really good, quick and easy to make and costs a lot less than buying them already made.
This seems like something truly delicious. Alas, my weight problems necessitate that I don’t make so much of anything in the dessert line.
For the filling try using some granny smith peel with the sugar and the strawberries in the pan, on low heat, the pectin of the peel will thicken your filling. It works for me. Thanks for the recipe. Take care.
You might also look at recipes for Chocolate Stout Cake. Beer, butter, and sour cream keep it really moist. It vanishes every time I make it for friends. Personally, I favor Guinness Extra Stout, but versions with regular Guinness and coffee stout are good too. Think bittersweet v Hershey Special Dark v closer to milk chocolate. I use a mocha ganache instead of the whipped cream in the recipes, and I favor a Bundt pan. And, the cake is good enough that I often glaze only half the cake so that those who don’t want the ganache are happy.
Not to be rude to the person who made that cake you wish yours looked like, but yours actually looks a lot tastier. I’m not about to try to make so much as a mix cake where you add an egg and some water and beat it, but if I saw the two cakes next to one another in a store, I’d be looking at yours a lot longer than that one that looks as solid as a rock and as unforgiving as a mother-in-law’s frown. And, keep in mind, strawberries and I don’t get along at all! Still, yours looks better to me. I’d pluck the strawberries and eat around them and be happy.
When my husband turned 50 (thirteen years ago), I made a German chocolate cake from scratch. Looked beautiful. Tasted like dust. Much better to have a cake that looks like the loving hands of home did it and tastes great.
Ironically, I was looking through my recipes 2 days ago and found this recipe and made it. I was lazy and put it in a 10×14 pan and it was huge. I also thought it was going to be too much chocolate so just made a boring white frosting. It is a really good cake, though, and quite easy when you use the 10×14. So funny that it is the same recipe and I have no idea where or when I printed it. It was yummy and there is only 1 piece left!
The last cake I baked tilted in the oven and ended up with a severe slant. I covered with enough frosting to make it look level. The portion that was about 50/50 frosting went first!!! I gave up on cakes, but Betty Crocker has a biscotti recipe using sugar cookie mix online that even I can’t screw up. Give it a try.
I had posted in an earlier that there was a Covid19 patient in my mother’s nursing home. 90% of the tests are back including my mom and all tested negative. Hoping that the remaining 10% also come back negative. It’s nice to have good news in this mess.
Thanks for posting the recipe! I found myself wanting to ask, but realistically given the sad state of my to-do list, I don’t need to be baking much less eating cakes. Still, I love having the recipe and your advice on execution. Someday…..
I make a cake called “There no such thing as too much Chocolate ” aka chocolate overload . Started as the birthday cake I make my brother by another mother for his birthday. Every year I try to fit more chocolate into it . I learn how to make chocolate plastic ( moldable chocolate decorations)
Thank you. You made me so hungry with your cake, I experimented with cherry jello and cocoa. Cherry jello mixed with cocoa and then allowed to set was surprisingly good.
Oh thank you for the recipes! Printed, and saved as pdf. Can’t wait for the end of the month when I get to make it for my birthday!
My sister swears by powdered buttermilk. She loves the fact she can make up what she needs for a recipe without trying to figure out what to use the rest of a carton for. I have done the vinegar trick myself.
Hi,
I don’t mind baking cakes and I can (sometimes make them look good) but I find that it’s very had to balance the look/taste as quite frequently the cake looks fab, but is a bit meh ???? in the taste department. I have to say, I’m much more interested in the taste of a cake….
On a ‘pick-me-up’ note any time I feel sad or low I look up ‘cakefails’ on the internet… it always make me happy… especially the hedgehog one!!!
Remember cake is for eating, not looking at!!!
Oh and thanks for all the snippet etc , it helps! As someone working in a hospital right now, I’m not getting time to bake!
C
I think I will stick to buying and eating.
Next time you might want to try it with the buttermilk as I’ve always noticed that buttermilk makes all cakes better. Also, this picture is really reminding me of a chocolate stout cake recipe from a brewery in Oregon that is definitely the most amazing cake ever. It’s in the book called American Cakes.
I have a gre2t recipe that uses plain Greek yogurt. I think that would stand in well for the buttermilk
I tried the recipe. It came out well. This is the 2nd time I have frosted a cake, the 1st time was a disaster, because I tried to pipe the frosting.
Here the result.
Here is the result with Strawberries and cherries.
Ooh ???????? lovely looking cake. Hope taste delicious ????.
????????
I like that cake recipe a lot. I have 3 boys and they can put that cake down in about a day. I have made a peanut butter filling for it, and I want to try a toffee flavored filling. The strawberry filling sounds delicious too!
OMG
You changed my life this weekend. We made this cake and frosting, adjusted for raspberries instead of strawberries, and it was honestly the best thing ever. This cake and frosting combo beats any cake we’ve bought outside of the home.
Ruined. We are ruined. However, we also now have the BEST ever cake to share for birthdays.
Thanks!
1) I am now seriously craving cake.
2) You can ‘make’ buttermilk with distilled vinegar?? This is a thing??
3) Obviously, I do NOT perform the baking functions within my household.
…I can make a seriously mean Japanese steakhouse chicken and steak with fried rice though.