This is the closest you’ll get to scratch-butter-cake taste when using a mix. The flavors in the cake will bring back memories of birthday parties of yesteryear—light yellow layers, fluffy chocolate frosting, and that essential glass of cold milk. You couldn’t keep your hands out of the mixing bowl as a child and you won’t be able to as an adult!
Image credit: flickr.com
Mom's Layer Cake with Fluffy Chocolate Frosting
Print RecipeIngredients
- FOR CAKE
- Solid vegetable shortening for greasing
- the pans
- Flour for dusting the pans
- 1 package (18.25 ounces) plain white
- cake mix
- 1 cup whole milk
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, melted
- 3 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- Fluffy Chocolate Frosting (see below)
- FOR FLUFFY CHOCOLATE FROSTING
- 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
- 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted, plus additional if needed
- 1/3 cup whole milk, plus additional if needed
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Instructions
FOR CAKE
Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Generously grease two 9-inch round cake pans with solid vegetable shortening, then dust with flour. Shake out the excess flour. Set the pans aside.
Place the cake mix, milk, melted butter, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed. The batter should look well blended. Divide the batter between the prepared pans, smoothing it out with the rubber spatula. Place the pans in the oven side by side.
Bake the cakes until they are golden brown and spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 27 to 29 minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 10 minutes. Run a dinner knife around the edge of each layer and invert each onto a rack, then invert them again onto another rack so that the cakes are right side up. Allow them to cool completely, 30 minutes more.
Meanwhile, prepare the Fluffy Chocolate Frosting (see below).
Place one cake layer, right side up, on a serving platter. Spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer, right side up, on top of the first layer and frost the top and sides of the cake with clean, smooth strokes.
Place this cake, uncovered, in the refrigerator until the frosting sets, 20 minutes. Cover the cake with waxed paper or place under a glass cake dome and store at room temperature for up to 4 days. Or freeze it, wrapped in aluminum foil, for up to 6 months. Thaw the cake overnight in the refrigerator before serving.
FOR FLUFFY CHOCOLATE FROSTING
MAKES: 3 cups, enough to front a 2- or 3-layer cake or 30 cupcakes; PREPARATION TIME: 10 minutes
Place the butter and cocoa powder in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until the mixture is soft and well combined, 30 seconds.
Stop the machine. Place the confectioners’ sugar, 1/3 cup milk, vanilla, and salt in the bowl, and beat with the mixer on low speed until the frosting lightens and is fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.
Add more milk if the frosting is too thick or confectioners’ sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, if the frosting is too thin.
Use the frosting to frost the cake or cupcakes of your choice.
More about The Cake Mix Doctor:
Who could believe these cakes came out of a box? Moist, tender, rich, deep, and complexly flavored, without a hint of artificiality, each cake stand up and delivers. But without any of the fuss of baking from scratch. Anne Byrn, an award-wining food writer and self-described purist, creates recipes that employ a cake mix’s strengths—convenience, ease-of-use, dependability, and almost imperviousness to overbeating, underbeating, overbaking, and underbaking.
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