If you can believe it, this cake came from a McCall’s Magazine published in 1949 and is, in my opinion the best damn chocolate cake ever. Even better than what Trump served to Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. It is a huge three layer cake and of course you need not use the icing suggestion but the cake itself is pretty much no fail and tastes great.

Ingredients

• 2 ½ cups of sifted cake flour
• 2 tsp of baking soda
• 1 tsp  salt
• ½ cup of butter
• 2 ½ cups of brown sugar (firmly packed)
• 3 eggs
• 3 x 1 oz  squares of unsweetened chocolate
• ½ cup of buttermilk
• 2 tsp of vanilla
• 1 cup of boiling water

Method

Set the oven at 375 degrees F. and grease 3 8” cake tins and dust with flour

Sift the cake flour and sift again with the baking soda and salt.

Cream the butter in a separate bowl until light and fluffy. Add the brown sugar a little at a time and continue creaming until fluffy and light. Add unbeaten eggs one at a time. Beat well after adding each egg. Melt the chocolate and mix it in thoroughly with the butter mixture.

Mix about 1/3 of the flout in the batter and stir well. Add 1/3 of buttermilk and mix. Alternate flour and buttermilk until all is added. Now mix in the vanilla and boiling water. Pour the resulting batter into the cake tins (the batter is very thin but don’t be alarmed – it’s going to be okay). Bake for 25- 30 minutes. Ice with Whipped Cream Frosting. (see below)and sprinkle with grated chocolate for an amazing 3 layer cake.

 Whipped Cream Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cups of whipping cream
• ¼ cup sugar
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl (mix – don’t whip). Place in the refrigerator to chill for 2 hours at least. Then remove and beat until the mixture is so thick it holds its shape and will stand in peaks. You are ready to frost your cake. The layers rise while cooking and I find it is necessary to flatten the bottom and middle layers by cutting the rounded top off each layer to allow the cakes to sit on top without slipping off .