Avery’s Favorite Choco­late Cake and Crazy Frosting

Avery’s Favorite Choco­late Cake and Crazy Frosting

1/2 cup but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups “Sugar in the Raw“
pinch salt
2 tsps bak­ing pow­der
1/4 tsp bak­ing soda
1/2 cup choco­late chips, melted (they stay a bit grainy, don’t worry)
2 eggs
2 tsps vanilla extract
3/4 cup evap­o­rated milk
3/4 cup sour cream, plus 1/2 cup more for frost­ing
1 packet Swiss Miss Hot Choco­late mix

Now, in Con­necti­cut I don’t have a hand blender, and guess what? You don’t need one. I also do not have a sifter, and as far as I can tell, I don’t need one of those, either. I just mixed all the dry ingre­di­ents together, beat them about 300 times with the milk, sour cream and vanilla. Then I added the egg and beat about 150 times more, then stirred in the choco­late chips which were grainy and not liq­uidy at all, so the result­ing bat­ter is a sort of golden color with brown flecks. Bake at 325 degrees for about 35–40 minutes.

Now, the crazy frost­ing. Not feel­ing con­fi­dent about what frost­ing involved in the way of ingre­di­ents, I looked up many recipes in my trusty and ven­er­a­ble New York Times Cook­book. The link I’ve given you here is to the fab­u­lous, quirky, intel­li­gent and delight­ful Hick­ory Stick Book­shop in Wash­ing­ton Depot, Con­necti­cut, our “local” book­store. It is always a favorite (and extremely expen­sive) after­noon there, as we all find things we had no idea existed but then feel like things we can’t live with­out. But I digress.

About frost­ing. So all the recipes I read called for confectioner’s sugar and light corn syrup, nei­ther of which I had. Also, I knew the choco­late chips wouldn’t melt enough for frost­ing. So I had an inspi­ra­tion: why not hot choco­late mix? Listed on its ingre­di­ent label were both confectioner’s sugar AND light corn syrup! Fur­ther inspi­ra­tion: sour cream? And sure, enough, the extra half cup of sour cream made the mix absolutely creamy, spread­able, and it melted right over the top of the cake, and into the holes I made with the tines of a fork. Delicious!

And if you want this cake to be lemony instead of choco­late, sub­sti­tute the grated rind of three lemons, plus 2 tea­spoons of lemon extract, for the choco­late. Then, I did acquire some confectioner’s sugar by the time I tried the lemon ver­sion of the cake, and a lit­tle lemon juice plus sour cream plus confectioner’s sugar makes a DIVINE glaze.

Never say I’m not sweet…

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