Grandmama's Chocolate Cake - 100 year old recipe

 

Guest blogger Linda from http://www.b-bumble.com/ and her sister Darla from http://darlasdoodlinginmymind.blogspot.com/ are both creative, charming Southern ladies.  Linda makes and creates astoundingly beautiful and fun quilts and patterns.  Darla paints amazingly beautiful scenes with water colors.  They offer us a cake recipe used by their family for over one hundred years.  Linda wrote, "As a child, my grandmother used to get out of working in the fields by offering to go bake a chocolate cake. This is the recipe she used. She will be 103 this summer!

This is not a ?"pretty"? cake, but it is delicious! Poke holes in the layers to let the fudge seep through. The fudge frosting will keep sliding off and you have to just keep working it until it firms up on the cake.

My family has carried on the tradition of having this cake at birthdays and special gatherings. The uglier it is, the better we know it will taste!"

Linda and Darla's Grandmama’s Chocolate Cake

1 cup shortening

2 cups sugar                             Cream together.

2 eggs

1/2 cup cocoa

1/2 cup boiling water                Mix together and set aside.

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp soda                                Add flour mixture and milk mixture alternately, ending

1/4 tsp salt                               with flour.

1 1/2 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla

Turn oven on to 350°.   Prepare four 9 inch pans by greasing and flouring.  Cut wax paper to fit the bottom of the pan.  Pour batter equally into pans and bake for 25 minutes. 

Ice with fudge icing while hot.  Grandmama used a toothpick and poked holes in the hot cake so fudge would run into the cake.

Fudge:

2 cups sugar, 1 stick butter, 1/2 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup evaporated milk. 

Combine in iron skillet and heat to boiling.  Boil for about a minute or two.  Pour over warm cake, pulling up fudge from the bottom and icing continually until the fudge hardens on the cake. 

Darla (standing), Linda (left) and their precious Grandmama...can you believe she is 102 years old?  She looks much younger, doesn't she?  What beautiful ladies :-)

Here is a letter from Darla about her Grandmama:

A Grandmother’s Legacy

My grandmother’s chocolate cake was famous…at least in her circle of friends.  She made the cake often.  If she did not take it to the fellowship or a family gathering it would be missed.  Her cake was not just an ordinary chocolate cake, more a cross between cake and candy, a chocolate creation if you ask me.

At a fairly young age I went to stay with her for a few days.  I was just learning to bake and wanted to learn to make her chocolate cake.  I requested that she share her recipe with me.  I thought all was lost when she told me there was no recipe.  As many of the women from her generation, Grandmama was a “dump and stir” cook.  At her suggestion she dumped out the flour or sugar, I measured and recorded the amounts thus preserving the recipe for future generations.  Today the cake continues to be a family favorite. 

Working together with my grandmother I learned much about her.  As we mixed up the batter she shared stories of her childhood and told me of how she became the baker in her family. 

Coming from a large family, all of her brothers and sisters worked the fields together, hoeing the weeds or harvesting the crops.  Her older brothers would call to my grandmother, “Irene, go in and bake a cake for supper.”  Willingly she left her hoeing and went to the house. 

As she talked, she laughed, “I didn’t like to work in the fields.  We had no air conditioning, so it was a hot kitchen, but I preferred spending my afternoon baking to working in the fields.”

Grandmama will be 103 this coming summer, August 16^th.

Darla Royal

Thank you kindly for sharing with all of us, ladies.  We can't wait to try out your treasured family cake recipe!  Please wish your dear Grandmama all the best from us!

http://www.rocknquilts.blogspot.com/

will feature Linda as a quilting guest blogger on Monday, May 2nd.

You could win one of three of her original quilt patterns!  Drawing held Monday, May 16th.

Be sure to check back sew you don't miss out!