Tomorrow is my Mother's 89th birthday. That means I have spent part of today preparing food and dessert and getting fun decorations ready to go. I have about 3/4ths of everything done, including packing the car with the non-food items. My goal is to be able to get up tomorrow morning and have nothing to do but lazily drink coffee in a peaceful manner and then get my self presentable before it is time to leave. I am going early to disperse the decorations all over, so I didn't want to need to do anything else before I left and feel all rushed and the such. I detest being rushed. Don't get me wrong, I don't like to be late arriving anywhere I'm supposed to be either, but that means I make every effort to start early enough to do both, not be rushed and be there on time !
I thought I'd share the recipe for the Hershey Bar cake that I am taking with you. It's possible that others have shared a version of it before, but this is the way we do it. It's farely simple, but it is extra yummy too.
Here are the ingredients for the cake.
Hershey Bar Cake Recipe
(Frosting Later)
1 Box of Devil's Food Cake Mix
1 Box of Instant Vanilla Pudding (3.4 oz box)
3 Eggs
1- 1/2 Cups of Milk
3/4 Cups of Oil
The first thing I always do is prepare the pans. Once you get the cake batter done, you don't want to leave it sitting before being able to put it in the pans. (I used 3 8-inch round layer pans.) I butter mine, then put a little flour in them and shake it around the pan, bottom and sides, then tap out any loose flour before putting some parchment rounds inside. Parchment rounds are a luxury I think. I used to cut the rounds myself out of waxed paper and it works fine, it just takes longer than I want to spend on it anymore. 😉 I do use butter instead of Crisco or the such, because butter works as well and I would prefer butter baking into the sides of my cakes instead of shortening. That is just my personal preference though, you can use either.
Add your cake mix, instant pudding, eggs, milk and oil in your mixing bowl and then mix on low for a few seconds so your pudding power and cake mix won't make a dust cloud... and then...
....mix on medium about 2 minutes till well blended. I do stop mine before raising the speed and scrape around the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl to make sure no dry ingredients are hiding in blobs underneath what I can see.
Bonus photo.... just because I liked it.
Now it is ready to pour into the prepared pans. Try to make sure you get as close to an equal amount of batter in each pan so your layers will be as close to uniform as possible. It is also good if you are cooking all three layers in the oven at the same time, which I did, so the cooking time is the same for all.
I go fairly close to the baking temp listed on the cake mix box. It said cook at 350 degrees, but I know from experience that it is easier to make chocolate cake dry than most other flavors, so I like to cook it a little lower. This time I put the oven on 325 degrees. It also says cook about 25 to 28 minutes. Since this has pudding in it that the box doesn't normally ask for, I usually set the timer for about 20 minutes, check them, carefully turn the pans if they look like they are going to cook uneven and then I cooked them about 6 more minutes and they were nicely done. Ovens are different though and hopefully you know yours, so you'll know when to check on them.
After I get all the layers out of the oven and sitting on top of the stove, I like to turn them out on a cooling rack. I put the rack on the top of the pan and then carefully, with pot holders, flip them over.
I take a knife or whatever is handy and carefully lift up the pans and take them away.
This is how they look with the parchment still stuck to them.
I gently peel back the parchment and take it off. THEN, I take another rack, lay it on top of the first layer and flip it right side up to cool. I like to do this because sometimes the smooth surface of the top will dent and stick to the rack if I don't. For some reason, the bottom never does that to me.
Then I stack my cooling racks (these are made to do that) and let them cool.
While they are cooling. I begin prepping for my frosting. Here is the frosting ingredients. It does call for some regular white sugar too and that is in my big canister in the back.
Hershey Bar Cake Frosting Recipe
8 ounce cream cheese - softened
1 Cup Confectioners Sugar
1-1/2 Cups White Granulated Sugar
12 ounces of Cool Whip (Whipped Cream)
3 Chopped Hershey Bars
NOTES:
I usually sit my cream cheese out before I start making the cake, maybe a little earlier so it can come to room temperature.
I usually put the Hershey Bars in the freezer after I buy them. This makes them easier to chop for the icing. I also buy a pack of 6 bars and nearly use them all as back when the recipe was created, I believe that Hershey Bars were twice as thick as they are now, so three of the "regular" sized bars today just aren't what they use to be. I'm sure it would be good still with just 3 thin ones, but I'm not going along with that. 😆
I like to chop mine small, but not into tiny crumbs. I also don't want to leave big pieces in it either since it is in icing and ... I just don't like big hunks in it when I am trying to eat it on cake.
There.... nice small chunks.
In putting the frosting together, you will first put the cream cheese, confectioners and regular sugar in your mixing bowl and mix only till incorporated nicely. No need to let it mix an extra long time. I suppose you could do this by hand if you wanted.
After that, you fold in the whipped cream and chopped chocolate with your spatula, again until incorporated.
This frosting is thick, which makes the cake easy to ice with it.
I make sure to let some overlap the edge a little as I frost between the layers since I am going to frost the outside of the cake too.
Now THIS is MY kind of stacking....LOL
If you have gone correctly by the proportions in the frosting recipe, it will be thick enough to put all around the outside without sliding off.
One time I made one for a beach themed party and colored the icing an aqua color and made homemade cream mints which I pressed into candy molds that were the shape of different kinds of shells. It was pretty neat.
Speaking of that, I decided to go find a photo of that cake and here it is. The DAD Photography was my brother David's tag. His initials spelled "DAD".
I meant for Mom's to be purple, but when the time cake I could not find the gel coloring I thought was here. I did a big clean out last year and some of my colors were old, so I ditched them. The purple was newer and I thought there was another color or two that was not old that I kept, but I could not find them. I either got too clever for myself in finding a new place for them to store or since I was in the mood to clean out and throw out, I could have just trashed them all, figuring I'd get some fresh ones later and date them. Who knows? I sure don't, I just know I got tired of looking for them. I tried to take the red and blue liquid colors I had to make purple, but my attempted just looked gray, so I added a little more blue and.... well..... you see how it ended.
Back to the kitchen to work on a last thing or two.
I hope I didn't leave any instructions out, but if you have a question, let me know.
