Amish Magic Chocolate Cake With Brown Sugar Frosting

By Kevin Williams

This is a cake recipe I found in an Amish cookbook and it intrigued me because of its simplicity.  These days, with Bea and Aster, simple is golden.   This one had a few key steps that made it interesting, though, like dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk before adding to the rest of the mixture. And adding the hot water last.  Gave me a little bit of a chance to try to explain some simple science in baking to Aster.  I think the "magic " part of the cake can be explained a couple different ways. One, it is so delicious it'll disappear within hours of you taking it out of the oven.  But, as a practical matter, the "magic" is probably just in the way the baking soda interactions with the sour milk to create a fluffy, delicious cake!

This really makes a good cake.  I think if I made it again I'd be tempted to use two cups of brown sugar and then add maybe another cup of white sugar. You'd think the cake would be sweet enough with two cups of brown sugar, but it just didn't seem like it to me.  Now, I will say, though, that topped with the frosting it was plenty sweet so maybe you just want to leave it as is.  The extra sweetness is just something I'd be shooting for.

The brown sugar frosting, in my view, is simply amazing...I think I'd take it over buttercream any day.  And it is simply to make, you do have to stir constantly to avoid scorching, but that isn't tough to do...I was somehow managing to hold B in one arm and stir with the other hand and it got done.  You can get the recipe here.

Aster adds the flour...

Amish Magic Chocolate Cake before all gussied up with frosting...

This magic chocolate cake will do a disappearing act once you add this frosting!