Chocolate cake without a reason. Genius. I managed to miss every one of my family member’s birthdays this summer with the exception of my dad. My sister’s birthday was in July along with my grandpa’s. My mom and grandma both have August birthday days.  The next birthday is in October and as far as I’m concerned that’s about 30 days too long to wait for a cake.

With out of town work, and plenty of camping trips behind me, I missed everyone’s birthdays. This is highly upsetting for me, as there is always copious amounts of delicious food and home made cake.

I thought I would give a different recipe a try since I’m not baking for a special occasion. I wanted something that had simple ingredients – something I would already have in my kitchen and wouldn’t require a trip to the grocery store. I cruised cookbooks and websites for awhile until I stumbled upon this one at 1 family. friendly. food. They mentioned they also wanted a simple cake that was easy and fast to whip up. It’s +30ºC today and I wanted to avoid the 5 minute bike ride. I’m sure had I ridden my bike to pick up the heavy cream that this recipe calls for it – would have curdled in the heat on the 5 minute ride it takes to get home. Alas, I made a few changes. The cake recipe itself remains 95% the same while I used my own/my mom’s recipe for the icing.

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Icing For a 9 1/2 to 10-inch circular pan or 8-inch square pan Cake: 1 cup sugar 4 eggs, room temperature 1 cup sweetened cocoa powder 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup 1% skim milk 1/2 cup canola oil 1 teaspoon vanilla Icing: 3 1/2 cups icing sugar 1/2 cup butter 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 4 tablespoons water 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

For cake: Preheat oven to 360 F (180 C) degrees. Grease the pan. Whisk the eggs with the sugar using a mixer, until light in color and fluffy.In a bowl, sift the flour, cocoa powder, coffee.

On low speed, add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture. Add the liquids and continue to beat until incorporated. Finish mixing by hand with a spatula. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 45-60 minutes. Let cool in the pan 15 minutes and then release from pan (run a knife around the edge first). Turn out onto a cooling rack, with the bottom as the new top of the cake. Let it cool completely before icing.

For icing: In a bowl, combine icing sugar and butter. On the lowest setting, mix the sugar and butter until combined. Add cocoa and vanilla extract, blend. Add the water as you need it, depending on the consistency of icing you would like. Use a knife and slather it on.

Notes: I made several adaptations to the recipe on 1 family. friendly. food. Nurit’s original recipe calls for heavy cream instead of milk, and self rising flour instead of all-purpose flour. If you choose to use self-rising flour, please omit the baking powder and salt. The original also calls for a chocolate ganache on top and I went for frosting instead.