This is the cake that my family has always brought along for picnics and other family gatherings. A richer cake can be made by replacing the milk with cream.
| Servings: | 14 |
| Yield: | 1 – 13×9 inch cake pan |
Ingredients
- 8 tablespoons shortening
- 2 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee granules
- ¼ cup milk
- ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 6 tablespoons butter
- 5 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease one 13×9 inch cake pan.
- Cream together the shortening and the white sugar. Add the melted chocolate and eggs, mix well.
- Sift the flour with baking soda and salt. Add alternately with 1 cup milk to shortening mixture. Mix in 1 teaspoon vanilla. Pour batter into prepared pan.
- Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the center of the cake comes out clean. Once cool frost with Coffee Frosting.
- To Make Frosting: Mix together instant or leftover coffee, 1/4 cup milk or cream, cocoa powder, butter, 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract, and confectioners’ sugar until of spreading consistency.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 436 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 72 g |
| Cholesterol | 41 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 4 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 229 mg |
| Sugars | 58 g |
| Fat | 16 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
made this cake for my girl scout troop bake off and it won second place!! loved it!!
I love this recipe….
To the frosting I had to add 1/4 cup of milk.
I followed the recipe and it turned out great.
We were very disappointed with this cake. The only change I made was to use an extra ounce of chocolate per other reviews. The cake was dry–and still didn’t have much chocolate flavor. Definitely not worth the effort! The search goes on.
i always use this recipe. Love it a lot.
I baked this cake as a bundt and it came out fairly well. It seemed to be pretty dry when I first took it out of the pan, but we waited to eat it the next day. It was much more moist than I expected after being in a closed plastic container. I glazed the cake right before we ate it. If serving soon after baking, or if it is still not quite moist enough, you may want to try spreading a layer of sugar syrup on the top and letting it soak in. Letting it set overnight is generally best. My husband loved it and he grew up with a chocolate loving mom, so that’s saying something. 🙂
this is a great recipe. A few tweeks that I made that I thought worked was adding a shot or two of chocolate syrup to the batter and the frosting I only used 4 tbl butter and 2 cups confectioners sugar and splashed the milk in unil desired consistancy. Then I topped the cake with chocolate chips and dusted with instant Mocha. A++
Great recipe! I made cupcakes, they baked perfectly and tasted even better. My family agreed they tasted like brownies. I followed the recipe but omitted the coffee, and didn’t try the icing. I also found as others have that they had a melt in your mouth texture. I will be making these agian! 🙂
Very good and easy. I left out the coffee and it tasted great. I used it in a cake mold for my son’s birthday party and it worked fine. The only reason I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars is that it was just a bit dry.
I made this cake for work, and got rave reviews. I used butter instead of shortening, and heavy cream instead of the milk. I also added 2oz of chocolate to it, as it was being frosted with chocolate butter cream. Didn’t want it to be too sweet. It got rated “absolutely sinful” by one coworker.
Like others have said, it needs more chocolate. I did like that it was easy to make and didn’t need too many ingredients. I will experiment with different ingredients to see what works and what don’t.
I agreed with Sarah, one of the other reviewers, that this cake was on the dry and crumbly side, so the 3 stars is my oppinion. The taste wasn’t bad, but not chocolaty enough for me. I did have to make a change and use baking cocoa instead of the chocolate it called for, although substitutions of this sort are right on the can, I’ve done it before. Now as for my families oppinion…. they all seemed to like it. One of my daughters said it’s her favorite, and my husband said the cake tasted like the cake in devil dogs. But as for me, I’m going to keep looking.
This turned out beautifully! The batter was perfect and fluffy. It looked almost like chocolate pudding (i had to keep fighting the urge to eat it with a spoon!), and baked up nicely as cupcakes. I made a few changes. I used four ounces of chocolate, because I was pairing it with a very sweet frosting, and wanted it to have a deeper chocolate flavor, I used cake flour instead of all-purpose, and I used the suggestion of cream rather than milk. This will be my go-to chocolate cake! Thank you so much!
Delicious! Very nice texture as well.
add choc chips, otherwise it’s great!
I used 1/2 a bag of Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate chips in this recipe instead of 2 oz of unsweetened and baked it in my jelly roll pan. Covered it with a mixture of 1 can vanilla frosting and 1 tub of coolwhip. Rolled it up and topped it with the recipe for Chocolate Ganache on here. It turned out like a marvelous yummy gigantic swiss cake roll and everyone loved it! If you are going to make a roll cake remember to roll the cake up by placing a towel well coated in powdered sugar on the cake and rolling it up around the towel and letting it cool this way. Then it won’t crack up in the end when you fill it and roll it. Yum Yum!
I hate to be the first with a negative review, but I found this cake to be fairly dry and crumbly. I am a good baker and am not sure why it didn’t turn out well. I DID make two changes: I used butter instead of shortening (which I always do and have not experienced a problem before), and I added an extra ounce of baking chocolate. The flavor was pretty good, but the cake crumbled too easily. I made a 12″ round cake and it was done in exactly 24 minutes. I didn’t make the icing but used a rolled fondant icing instead. There is a chance that I made a mistake and it’s not the recipe’s fault, but I don’t think that’s the case. I’ll keep looking.
I made the cake part only, not the frosting. I had to add another ounce of chocolate because it wasn’t chocolate-y enough for us. I made cupcakes, baked for about 15 minutes, then watched them closely til done (around 18 minutes). Moist, with a nice taste and texture. I’m pleased with this recipe.
wow. this cake is so good. i added a little maple flavoring and some sweetened dark chocolate. for 2 9′ round pans it took 30 minutes exactly. another thing i liked is that it didnt turn all round on top like the box cakes. i was able to put the two on top of each other without them breaking! thanks for the great recipe!!
this cake has a very rich choclate flavour and a very moist texture that melts in the mouth.