CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE FROSTING

Charleighs Birthday Cake 2010

½ cupful shortening (solid)

½ cupful Hershey’s Cocoa

1 ¼ cupful granulated sugar

2 cupful all-purpose flour

2 eggs, unbeaten

1 tsp baking soda

1 cupful boiling water

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

Cream shortening and sugar; add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Then add ingredients as called for and, after adding them all without stirring, beat vigorously until smooth. Turn into 2 greased and floured 8-inch layer pans. Bake in oven at 350* for 30-35 minutes or until done. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Turn out on a rack. Cool completely.

When cakes are cool, trim top if needed. Put in freezer to await frosting. May be kept up to 1 week frozen. This keeps the crumbs down and makes frosting the cake much easier.

CHOCOLATE FROSTING

1 cupful butter (softened)

½ cupful half-half (approx)

1 cupful cocoa

4 cupful (1 box) Powdered sugar

Mix butter and cocoa together, adding half-half to keep it from sticking to the bowl. Add powdered sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix until smooth, adding half-half as needed to spreading constancy. It will harden after the cake is frosted and refrigerated.

From a 1934 Hershey’s cookbook. Hence some of the terms. They call it a Red Devil's Food Cake. Because the processing of cocoa was different, when you mixed it with soda, it took on a red cast. During the war, when cocoa was scarce, they added red coloring and called it Red Velvet Cake. I think the two taste different.

I always have Hershey's Cocoa on hand for hot chocolate. The shelf life is much longer than solid chocolates, and no one unexpectedly eats it.

I don’t have any problem with a boxed Devil’s Food cake mix, but you have to make the frosting!!

If I had a dollar for every chocolate cake I made I could buy a new hat!!

Monica Cochran has been calling me since Charleigh was a baby to make her birthday cake... It always has to be Chocolate/Chocolate with pink. I think she is about 9 now. I'm running out of ideas for brown and pink....