Black Magic Cake
This is a traditional cake recipe from my family, always made for our birthday. A cake you only got to eat once a year. The cake is very dark chocolate with coffee, extremely moist and easy to make. The frosting is the challenge; if made perfectly it comes out creamy and with a delicious caramel taste. If overcooked, it is grainy and chunky and oversweet. It takes skill and time to make the frosting so be prepared to do it more than once!
Cake:
2 cups flour
2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup dark cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup black coffee
1 cup milk
1/2 cup oil (like corn, canola)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Mix dry ingredients together and sift. Once sifted, add liquid ingredients and mix with a whisk. Just make sure to add the coffee at a temperature that is cool enough so it will not cook the egg in the bowl.
Pour the batter into a large greased cake pan and bake at 350°F for about 25-30 minutes, until a knife put in to the center comes out clean.
Frosting
This is the tough part. You must let the cake cool before making the frosting, because the frosting is put on the cake while it is warm.
1/2 C butter
1 C brown sugar
1/4C milk
2 C powdered sugar
Melt the butter in a pan, then add the sugar and mix it with a wooden spoon over a light flame until it is thoroughly mixed. Keep stirring over the flame until it bubbles. After about 2 minutes add the milk and keep stirring! Cook the frosting until you see it bubble, maybe it needs to bubble for 2 or 3 minutes. This is the part you need to do a few times until you know how to recognize that it is “right”.
You do not want to color to change, then it will have cooked too long — you just need the sugar and milk to melt together and the flavor to develop enough for there to be a good caramel flavor. After a couple minutes of bubbling you add the powdered sugar, bit by bit. If you add too much powdered sugar you will make grainy fudge; this is always a challenge because measurements are not exact and depend on humidity and flame. You want the frosting to be thin enough to pour, but also at a stage where it will solidify once cool into a creamy frosting, not a fudge.
Once you have added the white sugar, you have only about a minute or two until it starts to solidify before you must pour it on the cake.
Pour it over the cake and let cool, then try to restrict yourself to eating only once piece a day. It’s the best cake in the world!
Note: If you want to save yourself stress, frost the chocolate cake with another easier frosting, like cream cheese or even chocolate. But the best, best frosting is caramel, so it’s worth the hassle!
