Chocolate Cake Ideas

There's very little in life that has the potential for happiness that chocolate cake recipes do! Just reading them over and, better yet, looking at a photo can start a person drooling. Oh, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it!

Chocolate cake recipes are not all equal; some can be dry and some can be flavorless. But some can be just right. If you have a basic recipe that calls for milk or water, substitute some coffee to perk up the flavor (pun intended!)? Try using some of the new extra dark cocoa powders, to make your chocolate cake recipes more intense. Sour cream is always a good addition to chocolate cake recipes, too, making a cake so moist that it doesn't even need frosting -- you can just dust it with confectioners' sugar, which makes for a beautiful presentation.

Probably the most famous of all the chocolate cake recipes is the Brooklyn "Blackout Cake," which is frosted with a pudding-like fudge icing and then coated with chocolate cake crumbs. Those who've eaten it can be transported to Nirvana simply thinking about it! After all, you don't name a cake after the darkness unless it's particularly deep and rich and delicious!

Arguments about supposedly authentic recipes continue to this day. But even without the exact details, you can take the best ideas from the various chocolate cake recipes and make a "Blackout Cake" of your very own. If I were going to make one, I'd bake it in a 10" springform pan, rather than in 2 8" layers. And while the cake was baking, I'd bring out my jar of Chocolate Pie Filling and Dessert Mix to help me to make the perfect frosting.

Makes the best product I've found in all my years of cooking and baking; it's even low in fat and comes in a jar for freshness -- it's hard to beat that! So I'd mix up the recipe provided, but substitute coffee for the milk and use a bit less liquid than the provided recipe calls for to make the pudding thicker. Then, once the cake had cooled, I'd spread it lovingly with my pudding/frosting, and then sprinkle chocolate cookie crumbs on top ... sigh. I'd better go start baking -- if I may say so myself, this sounds like it has the potential to be one of the best chocolate cake recipes around.