Easy Chocolate Cake

There are a lot of cake recipes in the world, and there are a lot of cake mixes. Some people think that the only way to make a cake is with a boxed mix, and that's a shame. It's not that boxed mixes are bad for cakes, because many of them are quite good, but making your own cake doesn't have to be difficult at all, and being able to make your own cake allows you a lot more control than you get with a cake mix, so that you can make exactly the kind of cake that you want.

The real problem that I have with cake mixes is that it is with cake mixes that industry started subverting the desire to cook. There is a trick, you see, that the cake mix manufacturers learned. Cake mixes require you to add water and an egg and sometimes oil to the mix in order to work properly. There is no reason for them to require anything but water. They could create a perfectly good cake mix, equal to what you can buy now, that requires nothing but the addition of water.

The reason they make you add the egg and sometimes oil is because they discovered early on that making a cake from a mix that you just add water to didn't feel like cooking. But add the egg in, and suddenly you're combining several ingredients and it felt like cooking. It's a valuable lesson for life, sure, but it's also kinda sad. "All you do is add water and bake? That's not cooking. Oh, there's an egg! Why didn't you say?"

There are plenty of reasons to bake something yourself, but if all you want is the emotional fulfillment of cracking an egg into a bowl of powder, then I think you're aiming a bit low.

This cake is not a subtle cake. It is not a cake of distinction, to be brought to cake competitions and held up to the scrutiny of sophisticated palates. This is a quick cake, it's an easy cake, and it's a very, very sweet cake. It's for those times when you really just want a chocolate cake. It's a cake to bring to a friend's home when you want to bring something sweet, tasty, and unpretentious. We can discuss other cakes at another time, but this is what we have today. Today it's the Texas Sheet Cake.

Let's look at the cake ingredients.

That all looks pretty standard. Oh, hey, buttermilk, tha… is that margarine? Seriously?

Er… yes. Look, this cake was developed though decades of home cookery to be simple and delicious. Some of those decades included heavy margarine use. This is a Traditional cake, but the tradition is the kind that you find in community cookbooks which are sold to raise money for a local charity and give people the chance to show how much better their recipe is than their neighbor's. This could probably be adapted to butter, but we've not done the adaptation at The Food Geek Compound. Maybe one day, but if I'm going for that sort of thing, I'd probably pick a different cake to do.

In any case, let's get back to the ease of making the cake. Take the margarine, cocoa, and water, and combine over high heat in a medium sauce pan until everything is all melted. It can come to a boil if you want, but it doesn't have to.

Remove from the heat, combine all the dry ingredients, and stir in. Mix thoroughly.

Combine the egg and buttermilk, mix together, then add to the pot. Mix to combine.

Pour into a 9 x 12 pan, greased and floured.

Bake at 350° for 30 minutes, or until a skewer poked into it looks like

Which is not as dry as you typically do for baked goods.

While the baking is going on, take that pot that you used initially and, for the love of all things cute and fluffy, do not wash it. We need to make some frosting, and washing the pan will take valuable time and effort that will ruin the whole purpose of the easy cake. The frosting ingredients are:

Yes, there's more frosting. The nuts are optional. And notice the homemade vanilla extract. That was a christmas gift I got, but we'll teach you how to make that before the year is up.

Now this is going to seem familiar: combine the margarine, cocoa, and milk. Heat over medium until everything is melted and combined. (Note the dirty sauce pan.)

Remove from heat. Add the rest of the ingredients.

Stir to combine.

When the cake is done

Pour the frosting over the cake. Don't bother waiting until it's cooled, just pour and level. This is not a fussy "has to be cooled" kind of cake. The cake mocks your fussy cakes, because it is from Texas, and that is what Texas cakes do.

You can take a piece of cake to eat immediately, as is the tradition in our household, because some people are impatient. The frosting will likely run into the empty space if you take it too soon, but that's okay. If you wait 10-20 minutes, then that's fine too, and the frosting won't run.

And there you have it. Quick, easy, and the steps are almost exactly the same for the frosting as for the cake.

Easy Chocolate Cake

• Cake
  • 2 sticks Margarine
  • 4 tablespoons Cocoa Powder
  • 1 cup Water
  • 2 cups AP Flour
  • 2 cups Sugar
  • 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt, (or a half teaspoon table salt)
  • ½ cup Buttermilk
  • 2 Eggs, beaten into buttermilk
• Icing
  • 1 stick Margarine
  • 6 Tablespoons Milk
  • 4 Tablespoons Cocoa Powder
  • 1 box Confectioners sugar
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
  • ½ cup Chopped pecans, (Optional)

1.Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 15 x 10 x 1" sheet pan or a 9 x 12 x 2" sheet pan and set aside.

2.Combine margarine, cocoa, and water a 2-quart saucepan and heat until metlted and combined

3.Remove pan from heat. Mix together dry ingredients and add to sauce pan. Mix.

4.Add buttermilk and egg mixture to pan and mix thoroughly.

5.Pour cake into sheet pan. Bake for 20 minutes in 15 x 10" pan or 30 minutes in 9 x 12" pan.

6.Icing: While the cake is baking, put the margarine, cocoa, and milk into the still dirty washpan. Heat until melted and combined.

7.Remove from heat. Add rest of the icing ingredients. Mix to combine

8.When the cake is ready, remove from oven. Pour icing over cake and level.