This cocoa cake, that we always called the Old Black Cake, was my Birthday cake for as many years as I can remember thanks to my Grandmother. My Grandmother lived with us most of my grade school years. And, if she was with us, this is what she baked for us. It’s a pretty easy cake made from just a few ingredients which were pretty common things to have in the cupboards or pantry. This was just after the Depression so things were still scarce in homes at that time.
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup Hershey’s* unsweetened baking cocoa mix
- 1/2 cup hot water
- 1/4 cup melted butter
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup sour milk (1 teaspoon of vinegar in regular milk)
- 1 egg (beaten)
- 1 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine the cocoa and hot water, add the melted butter, milk, egg and vanilla.
Slowly add the above liquids to the flour.
Pour into a greased and floured 8×8″ baking dish. (we always used a metal pan but a Pyrex one should work as well
Bake 350 degrees until a toothpick comes out clean – probably around 30-45 minutes.
*(we usually had Hershey’s on the shelf – it was inexpensive then. Now it is hard to find. Walmart lists it as $8.50 for a small jar and has to be ordered. Don’t use just any cocoa mix as they have sugar added and it doesn’t work)
Cool the Cocoa cake and ice with this Never Fail Icing
- 3 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
- 1 Tablespoon Butter
- 2 Tablespoons Water
Bring to a boil and then add confectioners sugar until stiff and spreadable.
I can almost taste this cake here just by writing about it. I wish I still had a picture of it with candles. But this was way before we had instant pictures with our phone. I think we had a Kodak Brownie camera that we had to load film into it. And then when the roll of film was complete (12 or 24 pictures), we had to take the film out of the camera and take it to be developed. Both time consuming and costly.