Chocolate Dump-It Cake

For true chocolate lovers, to improve this recipe immensely:

(1) Up the unsweetened chocolate in the cake recipe to 5 ounces and consider using a premium chocolate like Guittard, Scharffen Berger, or Valrhona instead of "any old" chocolate at the grocer's like Baker's or Hershey's.
(2) Similarly, for the icing, substitute premium 60% cocoa butter chocolate chips for the inferior Nestle's semi-sweet chips.

Instead of using flour to dust the cake pan, dust with unsweetened cocoa powder. Just adds a bit more chocolate!

A trick I learned from a French pâtissier: When called to butter and flour a cake pan, replace flour with sugar. It makes for a sweet and slightly crisp outside and helps the cake rise (more to "grab" on to). Never failed me yet.

Substitute the cup of milk with a half cup of coffee mixed with a half cup of milk.

I've made this cake for years -- I love the texture and tangy frosting. I always feel confused, however, by the tube pan. So drippy! Use a bundt or regular cake pan.

Saw this recipe and just had to make it! Based on many reviews I decided on 5 oz choc, buttermilk in lieu of milk/vinegar, 1 C. coffee in lieu of water, dust greased bundt pan w/cocoa powder, cool 20-25 min and it released beautifully, used a chocolate ganache based on very mixed reviews of frosting recipe. My ganache is bomb: 5 oz. MILK chocolate chips, 1 1/2 tsp. veg oil, 1/2 C. heavy cream...melt choc chips and oil, remove from heat and whisk in heavy cream until smooth. AH-MAZING CAKE!

For history buffs: Sour cream chocolate frosting was originally published in 1952, in Helen Evans Brown's "West Coast Cookbook." Her friend, James Beard, included it in his James Beard Cookbook. It has been re-published by many sources varying proportions of chocolate to sour cream. Brown's recipe, uses only 1/2 cup of sour cream adding: "This consistency will allow fancy swirls that will stay for this icing neither runs nor hardens…." adding - when slightly cooled a pastry tube may be used.

I made this in a 13x9 pan, used half the icing. Everyone loved it. It really is best if you make it a day ahead of serving, the flavors have time to blend and mellow. Love the simplicity of the icing.

For those unaccustomed to tube pans and probably younger than 50 or so: the tube pan Hesser uses is not the big angel food pan where the tube part comes out. This would be a 9 or 10 inch one piece tube pan which may be unavailable now. That's why it requires careful prep. There's no forgiveness here if you forget an inside edge or corner. Do line the bottom with waxed paper. It was my mother's "go to"cake pan for everything in the 40's and 50's.

Because I had to bring cakes to a special event, I did a test run, following the recipe to the letter. It was well received by my testers (my three children and a couple of friends).

On the big day, I made two changes:

1. Subbed buttermilk for the milk + vinegar
2. Used classic vanilla buttercream frosting between the layers

Very good results - buttermilk kept chocolate cake moist. Vanilla frosting was delicious and lightened & sweetened up an intense cake. Also - don't overbake!

The directions call for a cup of water to be mixed in with the butter and sugar but there is no water listed in the ingredient list. Just wanted to make sure that was correct??

A stick of butter is 4 oz or 113 grams.
Four oz chocolate is the same.
1 cup of sugar is ca 200 g
1 cup flour 130 g (a bit less if sifted)
1 cup milk, water, etc is 236 ml
1 teaspoon is 5 ml
2 teaspoons are a desset spoon), 10 ml
1 tablespoon is 15 ml
To measure chocolate chips, you'd treat them as a liquid, therefore 1-1/2 cups would be ca 354 ml.
Our measurements are often much less precise than metric measures would be. Good luck!

The accompanying photo does NOT show a tube cake as called for in the recipe - it's always odd when the picture doesn't match.

I didn't have the right kind of pan, so I cooked it in two regular cake pans, and it turned out beautifully - so don't worry if you don't have a bunt pan or tube pan. It did stick a little on the bottom when I turned out the pans, so be sure to really grease and flour them (I used Pam). I cooked them for about 20 minutes at 375; and they could have gone a couple minutes longer I think to help with the sticking.

A tip I learned from Cooks Illustrated... when butter/flouring a pan for chocolate cakes, use melted butter and unsweetened cocoa mixed together and brushed into the pan. With this method, you don't get the white flour baked in to the surface of your cake. Works particularly well for bundt cakes.