PAXTON RECIPES CHOCOLATE CAKE

MISS DOVIE’S MAMA'S CHOCOLATE CAKE

        2 cups sugar

  1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour

  3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa

  1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

  1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda

  1 teaspoon salt

  2 eggs

  1 cup milk

  1/2 cup vegetable oil or melted              lard

  2 teaspoons vanilla 

  1 cup boiling water

Grease and flour 3 8” pans.  Medium oven (350).

Sift dry into large bowl and make a well. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat hard 200 strokes until it forms a ribbon.  (medium speed of mixer 2 minutes). Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour into pans.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until broomstraw in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool before frosting.

Make up frosting while cake is baking.

½ cup of butter (1 stick)

2/3 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Melt butter, stir in cocoa and cook for about a half a minute to get the fudge taste. Beat in powdered sugar and milk in two parts each, beating til it’s spreadable.  Stir in vanilla.

(About here, I’d imagine she’d have added:  wash up dishes real quick and wipe down the kitchen.   Then go stand in the back door and swing it back and forth as hard as you can to get some of the heat out of the house.    Do the same with the front door, with all windows wide open.   Go to well and draw a bucket cold as you can get.   Wash your face and your arms up to the elbows, and put a wet rag on the back of your neck.   Wash your hair outside with the bucket you’ve had sitting in the sunshine since early morning, bind it up in a tight towel, go frost the cake, and then dry your hair out in the shade before THEY get home).   Sit in the swing with one of Nettie Frances’s magazines til you hear the buggy about to round the curve.