I have missed my Word Press family!! December sure has a way of eating up our time and money, doesn’t it?! We have had a very busy month in our house but a great one! Thankfully it is a gorgeous day here and all the kids are outside playing and I am going to take advantage and BLOG!

Two of the best things about this month were, first, having my mother in law come visit and see our new house and spend time with us! We had a lot of fun and got to celebrate Christmas with her the week before Christmas and then the second was brother got engaged a couple days before Christmas!!!! That is where this cake came about. We had my brother and his fiance over for Christmas Eve fun and dinner and I wanted to surprise them with a special cake to celebrate. I didn’t have a lot of time so I plugged “Moist Chocolate Cake” into google and chose the recipe I am going to share with you as the cake recipe. It sold me when I saw it had coffee in it:-) The frosting I made up on my own and I am in no way exaggerating when I say this was one of the best cakes I have ever eaten in my entire life! I despise dry cakes and hoped for the best and this cake was so moist and fudgy and fulfilled all of it’s duties and expectations I had for it in the chocolate department! I am so thankful to have found this recipe as it will now be my go to chocolate cake recipe! I will type it all out but here is the link and the credit deserved for this cake! http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/moist-chocolate-cake

Again, I did not use their frosting (icing) recipe, but you can and I am sure it’s equally delicious! One more detail about this cake. I purchased easy writers to write Congrats Bob and Christine and the date on the cake. They should be called difficult writes because they were anything but easy and it looked lousy when I was done! The date at the bottom was ok, so I left that, but fortunately I had a whole bunch of Christmas sprinkles and was able to cover over the easy writer letters with round sprinkles. I would never use the white sprinkles again as they don’t show up well, but it was far better and looked festive and cute! My advice is this. Just get your frosting decorating tool out with a writing tip and write with frosting! Here is the cake recipe I used as well as my frosting recipe!

Ingredients for Chocolate Cake:

• 2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

  I used a different brand as it was what I had on hand

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 2 teaspoons baking soda

• 3/4 cup baking cocoa

• 2 cups sugar

• 1 cup canola oil

• 1 cup brewed coffee

  I used Nantucket from a kcup

• 1 cup milk

• 2 eggs

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extrac

• Directions:

• Directions

  1. Sift together dry ingredients in a bowl. Add oil, coffee and milk; mix at medium speed for 1 minute. Add eggs and vanilla; beat 2 more minutes. (Batter will be thin.)
  2. Pour into two greased and floured 9-in. round baking pans (or two 8-in. round baking pans and six muffin cups).
  3. Bake at 325° for 25-30 minutes. Cool cakes for 10 minutes before removing from pans. Cool on wire racks

Please note that I used two 8″ round cake pans.

 

This picture is dark but look at that beautiful batter!

Frosting Ingredients:

6  1/2 cups confectioners sugar

1 stick of unsalted butter, softened

1.5 tsp peppermint extract

8 tbsp milk

6 regular size candy canes, crushed well

a box of mini candy canes, for decorating the sides of the cake (you won’t use the entire box)

Directions:

Place all of your frosting ingredients, except the candy canes, in a large mixing bowl. Mix with a hand mixer on medium speed until well blended and smooth. Add in the crushed candy canes and mix well again until mixed evenly into frosting.

When the cake is completely cool, place a good amount of frosting on top of one of the cakes and spread evenly. Place the other cake on top of the frosted cake.

Now continue to frost the entire cake until it’s completely frosted all over. You can decorate however you choose, you can see how I did it! Make sure to decorate right away because the frosting will set in and somewhat harden and once that happens your candy canes and /or sprinkles will not stick well at all. They almost “glue” themselves to the cake when you place them right away, that is what you want! I did the whole perimeter of the cake in mini candy canes, it was just so festive then made the heart for the love birds out of 2 more large candy canes on top.

I’m not joking, this cake is freaking amazing! The frosting is freaking amazing. I admit it, I had no control and since cake is my ultimate favorite food in the world, I ate way more than I should have! Thank you Taste of Home for sharing this recipe!