Cooking With Ease by Melissa Tate: The Very Best Chocolate Cake Ever

Here’s the deal. I love chocolate cake. I have eaten lots of chocolate cakes in my lifetime and once I realized I could make my own chocolate cake and eat it any time I wanted, I set out to find a recipe for The Very Best Chocolate Cake Ever. It just so happens to be semi-homemade. That’s right. That means it’s easy! Well, semi-easy. I found this recipe years ago and tweaked it a bit since then.

This cake is moist and chocolatey; not too sweet but just sweet enough – and the icing…the icing is just the most excellent part of the whole thing. I mean, it would not be The Very Best Chocolate Cake Ever without that icing.

Chocolate cake can solve most any problem and comfort most any pain. Earlier this week, I met with a group of ladies for what we call Table Talks. It originated as a very organized get-together in my home, where we had a specific topic each month and read questions off of these specific cards I had printed off a lovely, little specific website. Month after month, we realized that we all enjoyed the part of the evening where we ate dinner and caught up on life more than we actually enjoyed the questions. The questions were meant to encourage us to share things about our faith, values, concerns – but for this group, it sort of hindered it. We had to stop the deep conversation to get into a shallow conversation about a predetermined topic.

At the beginning of the year we decided to change up the format. Starting in 2020, we talk “highs and lows”. Have you ever heard of that? Each person shares their high and low of the month. It has been amazing. We now rejoice in our victories and embrace each other in our sorrows. We talk life – real, current, what’s going on life.

This is a specific group of six ladies that I chose from different friend groups of mine and put together for what I thought the Lord was using for a very specific purpose – the purpose of practicing a regimented meeting to talk about topics relating to life and faith and how those intermingle. We were to meet on the first Monday of each month. Arrive at 7 p.m. Eat from 7 to 7:30 and then talk through four specific questions from 7:30 to 9:30, 30 minutes for each question. I am smiling as I write this, thinking how silly it was that I try to regiment this group of ladies in ANY way!

Last night we met for Tex Mex, at about half way between all of our houses. A few of us thought we were meeting at 7, a few thought we were meeting at 6. We trickled in from 5:30 to 6:45 eating chips and salsa and queso and catching each new member up on what we had already covered. We talked about it all – work, kids, parents, dreams, goals, health… all of it. I had made The Very Best Chocolate Cake Ever and brought it for dessert.

As the dinner wound down and we cut into the cake, one of the gals said she needed to leave. As she got up we all begged her to sit for just five more minutes. We hadn’t heard anything from her that night. “Just give us five minutes. Tell us what’s going on with you.” And the flood gates opened. That chocolate cake got us through the next hour of heartbreak and disappointment, laughter, tears, advice on what to do, what not to do, lists of what can help, stories of how we wished we had done something different in a similar situation or of how we felt like we had done something right in a similar situation. Chocolate cake was the great mediator of that night’s highs and lows.

My challenge to you this month is to make The Very Best Chocolate Cake Ever and talk highs and lows. Whether with your kids, partner, coworkers or friends. Rejoice in the victories and embrace in the sorrows. All the while…eating cake!

The Very Best Chocolate Cake Ever

Cake Ingredients:

1 box Devil’s Food Cake

1 (5.9 oz) box instant chocolate pudding mix

1 cup sour cream

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

1/2 cup warm water

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting:

9 Tbsp butter, softened

3/4 cup cocoa

3 3/4 cups of powdered sugar, may take a little less or a little more

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl or mixer, stir cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, oil, eggs and warm water. Grease 2 nine inch round baking pans with non stick baking spray. Divide batter evenly into each pan. Bake 24-28 minutes until cooked through. When ready, cakes should pull away from the pan slightly and a toothpick inserted in middle should come out clean. Allow to cool in pan and then turn onto wire rack to cool completely. Prepare frosting. In a medium bowl, beat the butter. Add cocoa and powdered sugar alternately, and a little milk as needed, beating after each addition. Once all ingredients are mixed in, add vanilla and mix thoroughly. Frosting should be firm but not dry. If too dry, add a little milk and mix. If not firm enough, add a little powdered sugar and mix. Place one cake on a plate and frost completely. Place the second cake on top of frosted cake and frost entire cake completely.

By Melissa Tate.