Cake #5--Easy and Elegant Chocolate Cake with Fluffy Chocolate Frosting

We loved the recipes!!  We love the Cake Doctor and we love that we can make recipes are own.  The Cookbooks - Chocolate from the Cake Doctor and The Cake Doctor ( her first one) give us a starting point to make so many cakes and frostings, but also give the fundamentals so that we can make each recipe our own.  The recipe calls for a devil's food cake mix, we used a rich chocolate cake mix instead.  Also, we used french vanilla extract instead of vanilla extract.  The frosting is a good basic chocolate frosting that can be used for many different varieties of cakes.  A few tips here...we forgot to softened our butter on the counter during the day and so we microwaved the butter for 5 second intervals for 15 seconds.  Worked like a charm.  Cream the butter well before adding the sugar and cocoa.  We also combined our powdered sugar and cocoa instead of combining the cocoa and the butter.  We also added a little more milk as we needed more of a spreading consistency.  Hope you enjoy!!

Ingredients for the Cake
1 18.25 oz. rich chocolate cake mix (we used Paula Deen's mix)
3/4 cup whole milk
3/4 cup canola oil
3 large eggs
2 tsp. french vanilla extract

Ingredients for the Frosting
8Tbsp (1 stick) butter, softened
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1/3 cup whole milk, plus more if needed
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 tsp.salt

To make the Cake
*Preheat Oven to 350 degrees
*Grease and flour  two 9 inch round cake pans.
* Place all ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
*Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute.
*Stop machine and scrape down sides.
*Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes.
*Divide batter evenly between pans.

 *Bake cakes until they spring back when lightly pressed with your fingers, 28 to 32 minutes.  Ours took 28 minutes.


THEN...

*Remove from oven and cool on wire rack in pans for 10 minutes (We run a knife around the edges and then set a timer.)
*Turn onto wire racks and let cool completely.

To make frosting


*Place butter in electric mixer.
*Blend on low speed until butter is creamed.  Take your time here, the better the cream texture the easier your frosting will be.
*Stop the machine.
*Place powdered sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, milk and salt in the mixing bowl.

*Beat on low speed until frosting lightens and is fluffy, 2 -3 minutes.  Add more milk (1 Tbsp at at time-remember you can always add but you cannot take away)  if desired for spreading consistency.

*Frost cake!!

Tip:  Place strips of parchment paper under your cake and then when frosting is complete,pull strips away and your plate is as clean as a whistle (BTW, are whistles really clean?  Nonetheless, your plate will be perfect!

  

       Don't you just want to have a taste of that frosting?!!!

 This cake dome was my treasure find....Isn't it beautiful!!

And of course, our Havilland and vintage pastry fork with a little slice of Heaven...

ENJOY!!