Dad is great...give us chocolate cake!

 My mom's friend Cindy's birthday was on Monday...so my mom wanted me to get a cake and surprise her. This was the perfect opportunity to try my hand at cake making...from scratch! And I knew just the recipe to use. A while back I had been watching The Barefoot Contessa and she made this awesome Chocolate Cake. I have never made a cake from scratch (aka not out of the box) and was really excited to try it. Instead of making the chocolate frosting, I made a Whipped Cream Frosting.


Beatty's Chocolate Cake

• Butter, for greasing the pans
• 1 3/4 cups all-pupose flour, plus a little more for the pans
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cups Hershey's Cocoa Powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp Kosher Salt
• 1 cup buttermilk, shaken
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 xtra lrg eggs, at room tempature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup freshly brewed coffee

Whipped Cream Frosting

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream (I used 2)

In a big bowl, whip the cream cheese, sugar, salt and vanilla until smooth. In your electric mixer's bowl, dump in 1 1/2 cups of heavy whipping cream. Whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture until well combined.

Preheat the oven to 350*. Grease up 2 (8 inch..I used 9) round cake pans with the butter and dust them with flour. Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt into the bowl of your electric mixer. Using the paddle attachment, mix on low speed until all is combined. In a seperate bowl, mix buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla. With the mixer on low speen, slowly add the wet ingredients the dry. While the mixer is still on low, add the coffee...take a moment to inhale...then make sure to scrape the bottom and sides with a spatula to ensure all batter is getting mixed. Pour the batter into the prepared pans making sure to keep the amounts in each pan equal to one another. Put the pans in the oven and bake for 35 to 40 minutes. A toothpick (or in my case a dry spaghetti noodle) should come out clean when insterted into the middle of one of the cakes. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and let 'em chill out the rest of the way until they are completely cool. Place one layer, flat side up on a flat plate. Spread a good amount of the frosting on the top. Put the second layer on top, rounded side up and spread out the rest of the frosing on the top and sides.


Happy Birthday to You!



Yum!

Success!  This came out great and everyone loved it!  I am not really the biggest chocolate cake fan, but my my...this was heavenly.  Both great recipes and extra tasty!