Choclate Shortcake

Choclate [sic] Shortcake

printable version

The title on the recipe card was misspelled so I continued the name - not sure if it was intentional.  Also not sure why it is called "shortcake".  To me a shortcake is dense and baked in a loaf pan.  This was just a very light, delicious, chocolate cake.  Also not sure about the frosting - I only intended to frost half of mine because I know other people in my house only like their chocolate cake with white icing.  More about the "icing" below.  The recipe is attributed to Barb Poplin - I don't remember the name, probably some friend of my mother's from somewhere.

I started by doing the saucepan stuff first because I didn't know how long it would take and figured I could mix the flour and sugar while it was melting.  I had been out all day delivering Pandemic groceries but came home a little early so I could make this cake.  But, feeling a little rushed to get it in the oven and then make dinner I didn't gather all my ingredients ahead of time and I really should have.  The butter and cocoa were sizzling before I got the Crisco and water in the pan.  (Don't you know a recipe is gonna be good when it has Crisco in it - that means its an old classic because modern recipes don't use Crisco in large quantities.)  I finished my tub of Nestle cocoa and used some Walmart (Great Value) to finish off.  I actually thought the GV brand was not as chunky which made measuring easier.

I stirred as it was melting.

I wanted to make sure the Crisco fully dissolved.  

This is probably the only "cake" flour I've ever seen in the store.  Supposedly it is more fine than most flours.

Even after my saucepan stuff was melted and blended I kept it on Low heat because I figured it should be added warm to the flour and sugar which I still hadn't measured yet.

I had less than 1 cup cake flour so I used All Purpose flour for the rest.  

I mixed it as I was sifting.

I took a break from sifting to make the buttermilk.  NEVER BUY BUTTERMILK unless you can buy just the right amount that you need.  Instead, use a ration of 1 TBSP to 1 c. milk to make your own.  In this case since I needed 1/2 cup I put 1/2 TBSP (1 1/2/ tsp) of vinegar into the measuring cup.  Then add milk to bring it up to the 1/2 c. level.  Let sit a few minutes so it can begin to curdle.

And then with no power I used the beaters to stir it around some more.

I poured the warm chocolate sauce in.

And used a hand mixer to beat.  (The recipe never actually says to mix...it just says "pour over".)

I had to scrape the sides and bottom because there was a lot of flour/sugar that wasn't mixing in.

I put the eggs and vanilla in the same cup as the "buttermilk".

First I sprinkled the baking soda over the chocolate mixture.  Then I beat in the eggs/buttermilk/vanilla.

When I poured it in the pan (ungreased - I wasn't sure about that but it worked out okay) I noticed it still wasn't well blended so I used the spatula to stir it around a bit more.

A lot of the same ingredients were going in for the icing so I just used the same pan.  I didn't have any margarine but I had this plant butter I'd gotten free with a rebate so I used that - only making 1/2 the recipe.

Sweet milk I interpreted as Eagle Brand milk or Condensed milk.

I measured 3 TBSP in one of my look down from the top measurers - I love those things!

A box of confectioner's sugar is 1 lb.  I have a jumbo bag from Sam's so I weighed 16 ounces using a diet scale.

I chose to use almonds because they are my favorite nut.  I also chose not to dirty a 1/2 cup measuring cup when I already had the 1 cup dirty so I just eyeballed it.

I poured the chocolate into my bowl of powdered sugar but before I could mix it all up it turned into a giant lump of sticky.  So I put it back into the pan and heated it some more - this helped me be able to finish the mixing in the pan.

After 22 minutes the cake was very jiggly in the middle and the testing pick cae out with raw dough so I baked an additional 10 minutes.  (The oven shows 327 because I had turned it off and a minute later when I turned it on it started at 327 not 350.)

WAIT A MINUTE!  Suddenly I realized this "icing" recipe was almost identical to a recipe for Brazilian party treats called Brigadeiro.  Well, those are basically just condensed milk and cocoa - this icing also has the margarine and powdered sugar but the way it pulled away from the pan and got hard quick was just like Brigadeiro.  So I left it on a warm burner until the cake was out of the oven.

I stirred in the nuts last thing and then "poured" it over the cake.  It didn't really pour though so I had to spread it like peanut butter.  The cake was still warm but the icing was pretty stiff.  The next day it was thick and crunchy to cut through and fell off in small chunks when you tried to take a bite.  The canned white icing worked very well on the other side and it was quite tasty.