Hershey's Chocolate Cake, Icing and Brownies

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate"Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

2 C sugar
1 3/4 C all purpose (plain) flour
3/4 C cocoa
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2 eggs
1 C milk
1/2 C vegetable oil
2 t vanilla extract
1 C boiling water

Oven= 350F
2-9" round cake pans, greased and floured

1. Combine dray ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes.
3. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin).
4. Pour in to pans and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.
5. Check with a wooden pick, if it comes out clean, the cake is done.
6. Cool for 10 minutes in the pans.
7. Remove to a wire rack and cool completely before icing.

Icing

1/2 C butter
2/3 C cocoa
3 cups of icing sugar (this may be too much but was the original recipe)
1/3 C milk
1 t vanilla

1. Melt butter and then stir in the cocoa.
2. Add sugar and milk alternatively and beat on a medium speed.
3. Add more milk if necessary.
4. Stir in vanilla.

Hershey's Best Brownies

Ingredients

1 C butter
2 C sugar
2 t vanilla
4 eggs
1 C all purpose flour (plain flour)
3/4 C cocoa
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 C chopped nuts

1. Heat oven to 350F and grease and flour a 13" x 9" x 2" pan.
2. Melt butter, stir in sugar and vanilla.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well with spoon after each addition.  Add flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt; beat until well blended.
4. Stir in nuts and pour in to pan.
5. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan.
6. Cool completely.

Chocolate Lime Flourless Cake

I love this time of year because it gives me a reason to experiment with recipes I wouldn't normally try because there would be no one around to eat them other than me.  So, this year I made a Christmas cake using a packaged mix.  It had Delia Smith's name on it and followed her famous recipe!  It was great fun to try out and I can see the attractions of a mix, which has everything measured out for you and with the fruit pre-soaked in brandy.  I only tried the cake yesterday though I had made it in mid-November.  I have been adding a bit of sherry each Sunday.  I'm not keen on brandy and have always used sherry instead.  This cake was a bit of a mixture, with brandy soaked fruit and a regular top up of sherry but it did taste wonderful.

Today I decided to try a new recipe, a chocolate lime cake made without flour.  It was wonderful in its own way.  Light and rich with chocolate.

Ingredients:

150 grams (g) dark chocolate chopped
150 g of unsalted butter (though I used salted and it was fine)
6 eggs, medium
250 g caster sugar
100 g ground almonds
4 teaspoons (t) best quality cocoa powder
zest and juice of a lime
icing sugar, for dusting the cake


Oven temperature:  180 C
Pan: 23 cm spring form cake pan, cover the bottom with parchment paper and butter the sides

1. Melt the chocolate and butter together.  I used a pyrex bowl suspended over a saucepan of boiling water.

2. Beat the eggs and sugar together until they are pale yellow and frothy and have increased to 3 times the original volume.

3. Mix together the ground almonds and cocoa powder.  Fold into the egg mixture.

4. Next fold in the slightly cooled chocolate and butter, followed by the zest and juice of the lime.

5. Pour into the prepared cake tin for 40 to 45 minutes.

6. Check your cake after 35 minutes.  I tested mine with a tooth pick and it came out clean at this point.  It is possible my oven was too hot, though I did use an oven thermometer.

7.  I served it with cream with sugar and lime beaten in but I think that in future I would use plain cream or ice cream since the cake is very rich.