Sunday, April 19. 2009 #6

Grandma's Chocolate Cake

I copied this out of my grandmother's handwritten recipe book. Some of the ingredients and lack of direction were a bit odd but I wanted to try it. I'm going to record here the recipe as she wrote it and then tell you what I did:

1 1/2 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 t salt

4 T butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 sour milk  (I used sour cream, next time, buttermilk)

1/2 boiling water

2 squares chocolate or cocoa

1 tsp soda

1 tsp vanilla

First I mixed all the dry ingredients.

Then creamed the wet ingredients in my stand mixer.  I went with chopped, unsweetened chocolate.  It did not incorporate into the batter even with the boiling water.  So it ended up as a yellow cake with little bits of unsweetened chocolate throughout.  Also, the amount of batter was much less that a standard double layer cake so I used two pans and only ended up baking then for about 15 minutes.  I used a chocolate icing that was like the icing on eclairs.  It was yummy. Strange cake!!  I'll try one more time but use Cocoa and one small sheet pan.  Stay tuned for adaptations!!!