Chocolate Cake With Strawberries On Top

Happy Birthday Erik!

I wanted to make a cake for my son’s birthday using what I had on-hand. The cake had to be chocolate flavor and of course had to be good. I have not made many cakes in the past and wanted something different then I have made before. So off to the internet search I went. What to enter, I did have Hershey’s Cocoa on hand so lets go with that. First thing to popup was “Really Chocolate Chocolate Cake” from the Hershey’s Kitchens. This has to be good, so I called my son in to see the picture and recipe  and asked if he would like this. He said “YEEEEEESSSS!!!!!”. That was easy! I followed the recipe pretty close only reducing the powdered sugar by a half a cup to 3 1/2  for the frosting, adding the sliced strawberries as a topping  and love to the recipe.

The test taste results:

Great!

Yum!

mmm amma mmmeuumm (I think they said, this tastes great or something like that)

This beats store bought

Leftovers are better then the day before

Ingredients for Cake

• 2 cups sugar
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup Hershey’s Cocoa
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water
• Chocolate Fudge Frosting (see below for the recipe)
• A handful of sliced or whole strawberries – be creative!

Make the cake

1. Preheat oven to 350°F
2. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans. Don’t leave any loose flour in pan
3. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in large bowl
4. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla then beat starting on a low speed (otherwise you will make a mess) increasing to medium speed of electric mixer for 2 minutes
5. Stir in boiling water
6. Pour batter into greased and floured pans
7. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out almost clean
8. Cool cakes in pans for 10 minutes
9. Remove cakes from pans to wire racks and cool completely (do not sneak a bite I will know about it!)
10. Frost with Chocolate Fudge Frosting – see below. Adding frosting to the first cake then top with the second cake and add frosting to the stack
11. Top with strawberries
12. Store in cool place as the frosting is mostly butter after all
13. Sing “Happy Birthday” (the traditional song as I think the copyright was removed)

Ingredients for Chocolate Fudge Frosting

• 3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter, melted
• 1 cup Hershey’s Cocoa
• 3-1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup skim milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Make the frosting

1. Place melted butter in large mixer bowl
2. Add cocoa and stir until smooth
3. Gradually (I mean this!) beat in powdered sugar, milk and vanilla
4. Beat until smooth

The dark cake and white plate does not work well with a smart phone camera.

Ditto from above capitation.

Dipped Strawberries

Just try and eat just one.

I was not going to post these dipped strawberries but my family went crazy over these after taking just one bite. Yes I will be making these again after that kind of response!

Ingredients

• Fresh clean Strawberries – you pick the amount you want to make
• 12 oz – Milk Chocolate Morsels – you will have leftovers so go ahead and make candy bars
• 2 tablespoons Vegetable Shorting
• a few table spoons of shredded Sweetened Coconut
• a few table spoons of Confectioners Sugar

Building – Dipping be creative

1. In a microwave safe dish add morsels and vegetable shorting. Heating in microwave for 30 seconds then stir. Heat for 10 seconds then stir. Repeat until smooth
2. Holding the strawberry by the stem dip the tip of strawberry into chocolate
3. Be creative and dip the chocolate covered strawberry into either the coconut and or confectioners sugar or nothing at all. Repeat this until you have a verity of covered strawberries
4. Chill in refrigerator for about an hour before serving

Chilled and ready to eat!

Lime-Coconut Oatmeal Cookies – copied

YUM!

First things first I can not take full credit for this recipe as I copied it from tamaraleighauthor blog (thank you!). I also did not follow the recipe exactly as I was missing a few ingredients (no lime zest and I used raisins in place of Craisins).

The cookies looked so good and of course in my never ending experimentation of using my KitchenAid stand mixer I just had to try these! I am glad I did because they are amazing!

Ingredients

• 6 tbsp butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
• 1/4 cup shredded sweetened coconut for cookie tops
• 1 cup raisins
• 2 tbsp for cookie tops
• 1-1/2 cups old-fashioned oats (not quick-cooking)
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. In large bowl, cream butter,  brown sugar and granulated white sugar with mixer on high speed until light and fluffy
3. On medium speed, beat in egg, vanilla, lime juice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
4. Beat in 1 cup coconut, Raisins, and oats; stir in flour
5. Drop dough by tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet, press a pinch of coconut and 2 Raisins into the tops
6. Bake 10-12 minutes until cookies are golden but still soft
7. Remove from oven and transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool (no sneaking a cookie!)
8. Eat!

Eat!

Dark Chocolate Cake Recipe

How do I look from this side?

I was looking for a good cake recipe and my friend came to the rescue with this dark chocolate cake recipe. I made this last year for Mothers day and again this year because it was such a huge hit.

Please don’t eat this all in one sitting! Yes it’s that good! You can freeze leftovers if needed.

Also this goes great with vanilla ice cream and coffee.

Note to guys: You must make this for your wife! 

Dark Chocolate Cake Recipe Ingredients

• 1 Pkge – Duncan Hines Devils food cake mix
• 1 Pkge small – Chocolate instant pudding
• 1/2 Cup – Warm water
• 1/2 Cup – ccoking oil  i.e. Crisco
• 4 large  – Eggs
• 1 Cup – Sour cream
• 1 small bag – Dark Chocolate chips
• For dusting  – Confectioners sugar

Mix it all about

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. In a large bowl combine all ingredients except chocolate chips and confectioners sugar
3. Beat 4 minutes on medium speed
4. Fold in chocolate chips
5. Bake in a greased & floured Bundt pan at 350 for 50 to 60 minutes or until done
6. Cool in pan for 15 minutes
7. Turn out on wire rack and cool completely
8. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar – I used a fine meshed strainer taping with my hand