Chocolatetown Special Cake recipe

Read the entire post before starting.

Ingredients
1/2 cup HERSHEY's Cocoa
1/2 cup boiling water
2/3 cup shortening (I use your usual vegetable/canola oil)
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups buttermilk or sour milk (See below)

Buttermilk recipe
I don't always have buttermilk available, so what the recipe said, and also what I have used is mixing 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon of white vinegar and adding it to milk to get about 1 1/3 cups works.


Heat oven to 350'F. Grease and flour your two 9-inch round baking pans.
In a small bowl, stir the cocoa with the boiling water until it is smooth, then set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat your shortening, sugar, vanilla until it is light and fluffy.
Add the eggs. Beat the mixture well.

Stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add this to the shortening mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Blend in the cocoa mixture. Beat well.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes. Remove from pans to a wire rack or someplace to cool completely. Afterwards, add chocolae frosting and decorations.

Just for decorations
For frosting, I've usually opted for going with a Duncan Hines chocolate frosting. But for decorations, I would make some chocolate leaves like you would get at some restaurant or something. It's really easy to do. I say that because I have some lemon trees...

Wash and dry some lemon leaves.
Melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Brush the leaves with the melted semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Place leaves in freezer.

You might want to do this first so that by the time the cake is done, you have leaves ready and waiting.
This is my favorite cake to bake from scratch. Everyone I've baked for seems to like it. It's very moist and comparable to some really nice restaurant desserts.