Grandma's Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake With Chocolate Icing

When I was growing up as a small child, I always looked forward to the homemade chocolate cakes that my grandmother would make for my Birthday. In our family, my grandmother was a dedicated baker and would bake something for us every day. Thankfully, she passed on her love for baking to me.

This recipe is done the old-fashioned way and is topped off with some delicious chocolate icing. Once your cake is cooled, you will want to store it in a cake container. If it's hot and humid outside, I recommend storing it in the refrigerator.

Cake Ingredients:

1/2 pound butter, softened
5 eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup evaporated canned milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the softened butter and granulated sugar. Slowly add in the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Slowly add 1/2 of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and beat for 1 minute. Pour in the 1/2 cup of milk and beat again, followed by the remaining flour mixture. Stir in the vanilla extract and beat again. Finally, stir in the 1/4 cup of evaporated milk and beat until all ingredients are well combined.

Note: If your batter seems really stiff, add a little additional milk.

Lightly spray a 9 x 13" baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35 to 45 minutes or until cake is done in the center. Cool cake on a wire rack.

Chocolate Icing Ingredients:

2 1/2 squares baking chocolate
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large saucepan, melt the baking chocolate over low heat. Stir in the granulated sugar and evaporated milk. Bring to a boil and boil for 2 to 3 minutes or until a soft ball forms when dropped into cold water. Remove pan from heat and stir in the butter and vanilla extract. Beat icing by hand until it is thick enough to spread on your cooled cake.

Grandma's Fruitcake

This is the recipe that my grandmother brought with her when she and her family left Russia in the early 1900's. As a child around the 1920's or so, while living on a farm in Pennsylvania which at that time there were a great amount of people coming from Europe, you needed to be able
to do things for yourself. She learned from her mother how to make a most delicious white fruit cake, a white fruitcake is a fruitcake that does not have any molasses, molasses which is very bitter, not having the molasses in the fruitcake gives it a lighter color, this gives it the name white fruitcake.

This fruitcake in the days in which my mother lived as a child with her parents was only
made during Christmas because the only time you could get walnuts, cherries, and some other ingredient's was in the fall of the year. Remember now they didn't go to the store to buy what they needed, they had to grow them. Raisins were dried by the people themselves, they even had to shell their own walnuts, and candy their own cherries, and such the pineapple and coconut I do believe they must have purchased.

To keep with tradition the only time of the year that I make or sell this fruitcake is during
the Christmas holidays, and in my mind you cannot get a better fruitcake.

Here we go now gather up your ingredient's and set them on your table, all ingredient's need to be at room temperature.

1 pound butter
12 eggs
1-pound sugar
1 pound flour all-purpose
1 pound white raisins
1 pound walnut meats
1-pound red and green candied cherries
1-pound bakers flaked coconut
1-pound candies pineapple
1 tablespoon of baking soda dissolved in 1/4-cup warm water
2 cups brandy--any brand
Soak the raisins, walnuts, cherries, coconut and pineapple with 2 cups brandy overnight in a stainless steel bowl.

In a 5 quart mixing bowl cream butter and sugar, then add eggs slowly, then add your flour and blend well, add the baking soda and water and mix a minute more, add all other ingredients and mix until well blended.

Mow you are going to bake it in 2 pound pan, or in the pan of your choice, foil or hard pan,
line the pan with wax paper or baking paper or better yet a pan liner the size of the pan.

For 2 pound pan:

Place 1 pound 12 ounces of the mixture in the pan and level it with a spoon, don't bang it
on the table.

Bake it at 350 degrees for 1 hour to 1 hour 20 minutes depends on your oven and how brown you want it. It's done when a pick is placed in the center and it comes out clean.

Let it cool on a rack for a while and then sprinkle it with 1 ounce of brandy and then another ounce when it is cool and then pack it away for about 3 days in your refrigerator and then enjoy.