Happy Birthday, Old Man, Here's Your Cake

Since I am the baker in the friend group, I was elected to make a birthday cake.

I have a bullet proof recipe.  It is from the Great Depression and I have featured it on my blog before.  The Buttercream frosting is, again, bullet proof.  They both are on the same link.

Who knows who is using this in a commercial environment since it is so simple that you could hand the ingredients and the recipe to a child and they would make it work.  It tasted like the dark chocolate cakes you can pick up in many places from The Big Boy bakeries all over the US, and I would wager elsewhere.

Weird recipe list since there are no eggs and it uses vinegar.  It's actually a vegan cake but it is one of the best cakes I have come across.

On the other hand, since it used my dark cocoa that I happened to have on hand, it was a thirsty beast.  I added extra milk to that Buttercream recipe to get it soft and smooth like we like it.  In fact instead of using two tablespoons of milk on the icing, which was above the original recipe, I used three tablespoons and it came out creamy and fudgy.

So the frosting is not vegan but "vegetarian", I the butter in the Buttercream was the real stuff.  I'm not vegan or vegetarian, so I'd say you can always figure out a substitute.  Margerine?  Coconut Oil?  Dunno.  The icing faithfully following the recipe was amazing!

But it was on the small size since I used a single amount of the recipe.  

When I made it later for the person's party, it was doubled.  My Bundt Cake Pan is rather large.

After all, he joins the rest of them.  Senior Citizen.  Dead Flowers and Black Balloons.  Sort of suits since that cocoa was the Ghirardelli's Extra Dark and tasted wonderful.

If you really want to try this, and you should, get the good cocoa.  The stuff that we are all used to just does not have the flavor you want. 

Oh and double the recipe.  You will get two layers for the cake.  You will thank me later!