My Favorite Chocolate Cake

ZOMG gang, I have found a new favorite chocolate cake recipe.  It's light, fluffy, moist, soft, doesn't call for weird things like mayonnaise or vinegar...  Look, I know mayonnaise is just eggs,and cake has eggs, but still that's just weird.  Also, the only mayonnaise we have in the house is light baconnaise, which is great in tuna but not in chocolate cake.

Maybe.

What about a maple bacon cake? You could probably put baconnaise in maple bacon cake.A little bit spicy, a lot mapley, crispy bacon on top... Maybe if you added it to the maple frosting? Smokey bacony frosting with crispy bacon garnish?  Ok, maybe maple bacon cake. But not chocolate cake. Why are you asking me to put baconnaise in chocolate cake? Whose idea was this, anyway?  Like Captain Jean-Luc Picard, I'm drawing the line here!

The line must be drawn heah!

Ok. Chocolate cake. Best chocolate cake I've ever made, and I'm quite fond of this recipe. The original recipe, from Allrecipes.com, called for melted blocks of unsweetened baking chocolate. However, I substituted unsweetened cocoa powder & coconut oil instead, according to the following conversions:

I did play with the proportions a bit though.  I think the extra oil is what made the cake so moist, and the cocoa powder reacting with the baking soda made it extra fluffy

As always, I highly recommend coconut oil, especially since a recent study says it make brain better work... better... brain.

Ingredients
1¾ cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
-
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder, not dutch process
3½ tablespoons of shortening or coconut oil (best only partially melted)
1 teaspoon of vanilla
-
1 cup of milk

1) Preheat oven to 350º.
2) Whisk together the first three ingredients until they're well mixed, then set the bowl aside.
3) In another bowl, cream together the butter & sugar until it looks like mashed potatoes.
4) Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5) Add in the cocoa powder & shortening/oil, mixing well again.
6) Add in the vanilla & mix that sucker some more.
7) Now add in a little bit of milk, then a little bit of flour, then a little bit milk, and a little bit of flour, mixing well after each addition. Should be milk, flour, milk, flour, milk, flour.  Start with the milk, end with the flour, 3 times each.
8) Bake in greased cake rounds for 25-30 minutes. If making cupcakes, you're looking at 10-12 minutes.

This recipe made me 2 dozen small cupcakes that came exactly to the top of the paper liners. I then filled them with vanilla marshmallow filling and topped them with my favorite chocolate rum frosting. You guys, you gotta try this frosting... Let's do that recipe next!