if chocolate is the answer, the question is irrelevant

sometimes, you need a chocolate cake in your life.  not because it's anyone's birthday, or a holiday, or any other reason.  

thus was Princess's opinion yesterday evening.

and who am i to deny a child chocolate?  the importance of chocolate has been deeply ingrained in me since birth by my mother, who has been battling a serious hershey-bar-a-day addiction since 1977.  and she's still thinner than me.  *shakes fist at the sky*

she fed us hershey's for breakfast on standardized test days because she read that chocolate improves mental acuity.  hey, worked for me!

anyway.

that says "Happy Friday," not "7APQY PNIDAY." 

my cooking is hearty and rustic;

my detailed icing skills are less than stellar.

i'm more paula deen than barefoot contessa, and you know what?  i'm okay with that.

and NOW i will share with you, my few faithful readers, my family's generations-old, top-secret recipe for chocolate cake from scratch.

this recipe is so simple, and yields such amazing results, that i promise you will never bake another chocolate cake from a box.

GRANNY'S SOUR CREAM CHOCOLATE CAKE

("Granny" was my great grandmother - my mother's mother's mother.  I think she'd be okay that I'm sharing this recipe with you, but don't tell the ladies down at the First Christian Church because it's possible she never shared it with them.)

INGREDIENTS FOR CAKE:

2 cups flour                                  1.25 t. baking soda

2 cups sugar                                 0.5 t. baking powder

1 cup water                                   1.0 t. salt

3/4 cup full fat sour cream        1.0 t. vanilla

1/4 cup shortening                      2 eggs

2 heaping T. cocoa powder (i consider "heaping" an understatement)

dump it all in a bowl in whatever order.  mix well.  pour into a greased-and-floured (really even that step is optional) sheet cake pan.  bake at 350' for 35 minutes.

INGREDIENTS FOR ICING:

1/3 cup softened butter               3 cups powdered sugar (approx. 1 box)

2 heaping T. cocoa powder       1/2 cup full fat sour cream

2 t. vanilla

dump in a bowl.  mix well.  ice cake.

let the cake cool before you ice it or the icing will melt on the cake and be too runny, not set up right.  but i find that if you let the cake cool for about 10 minutes while you're assembling your ingredients and then throw it in the fridge while you actually make the icing--even though i'm sure you're not supposed to put a hot sheet cake pan directly onto a tempered glass shelf in the fridge (although i've avoided disaster so far [but it reminds me of one time when my mom was making gravy from roast drippings in a pyrex dish on the stovetop which is supposed to be okay and the pyrex dish EXPLODED and if that happened inside my refrigerator--nooooes!]) then the cake will probably be cool enough to ice.

***

and then, because it's friday and we've made a cake for no reason,

sometimes it's okay to set the warm cake on the coffee table and eat it straight out of the pan.

sometimes.

(did i tell you J cut his hair?)

Princess looks a little like a black mamba with all that chocolate in her mouth and missing teeth.

"i have to brush my teeth GOOD tonight!"  -Princess

happy [chocolate] fridays!