Kathy’s Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cake

Valentine’s Day was Tuesday February fourteenth. I want to tell you what we did and what we ate, because we have decided this year that any small holiday is a holiday worth marking, and Tuesday I marked Valentine’s Day with a chocolate chocolate chip cake at the kitchen table.

The recipe is from A Family Feast and is attributed to somebody named Kathy. I do not know who Kathy is. I am willing to bet she is somebody’s aunt, the kind of aunt who shows up at family gatherings with a 9-by-13 pan of something deeply chocolate, the kind of aunt who has been making the same cake at every birthday in her family since 1982 because the cake is what people request. I am writing about Kathy as if I know her because I think the recipes you find on the internet were once somebody’s actual recipe in somebody’s actual kitchen, and reading them is, in some way, meeting that person, and I have decided I like Kathy.

The cake is fudgy chocolate cake studded with semi-sweet chocolate chips and frosted with a thick chocolate buttercream. The recipe does not pretend the cake is anything except chocolate. It is not a chocolate cake with raspberry filling. It is not a chocolate cake with espresso. It is a chocolate cake with chocolate chips inside it and chocolate frosting on top. That is the entire recipe. It is the kind of cake that knows what it is, which is the kind of cake my mama loves.

The math: a chocolate cake mix from the bottom shelf at Walmart, $1.49. Four eggs and a third of a cup of vegetable oil and a cup of milk and a tablespoon of white vinegar (the box says three eggs and a half cup of oil and a cup of water, but I have learned a trick from a YouTube video for making box cakes taste closer to scratch, and the trick is one extra egg, less oil, milk instead of water, and a tablespoon of vinegar to react with the leaveners; the cake comes out denser and more bakery-feeling than the box version). A bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips, $1.99. The buttercream: a stick of butter softened, two cups of powdered sugar from the bag I bought specifically for this kind of recipe, a third of a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder ($1.49 for the small can at Walmart, specifically for this), a splash of milk, a teaspoon of vanilla, a pinch of salt. Total cost of the cake: about $5.40 for a 9-by-9 pan, fed Mama and me for four big slices.

The technique on the cake is the box-cake-improvement trick. You whisk the cake mix, the four eggs, the third of a cup of oil, the cup of milk, and the tablespoon of vinegar in a bowl until smooth. The vinegar is the secret — it reacts with the baking soda in the mix and gives the cake more rise and a slightly tangier flavor that approximates buttermilk without buying buttermilk. You stir in the bag of chocolate chips, reserving a quarter cup for the top. You pour the batter into a buttered 9-by-9 pan. You sprinkle the reserved chips across the top. You bake at 350 for thirty-five minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

The frosting goes together while the cake cools. You whisk the softened butter and the cocoa powder in a bowl until smooth, then add the powdered sugar a half-cup at a time, alternating with small splashes of milk, until you have a thick spreadable frosting. You add the vanilla and a pinch of salt at the end. You taste it. You taste it twice. You frost the cake when it is fully cooled, with a generous layer over the top and down the sides if you have made enough frosting (which Kathy’s recipe gives you generously enough to do).

I baked the cake Tuesday afternoon between school and my Sonic shift. The kitchen smelled like a bakery for the entire two hours of bake-and-cool time. I frosted it at five o’clock. I left it on the kitchen table covered with foil so Mama would walk in and see it.

Mama walked in at six-fifteen. She had on her work polo and the new shoes. She walked into the kitchen, saw the cake on the table covered with foil, looked at me, and said, baby, what is that. I said, that is your Valentine, Mama. She set her purse down. She sat at the kitchen table. I lit a single candle on the cake (the same candle I had used for her birthday in January; she pointed it out and I said, this candle is becoming a household tradition, Mama, and she laughed). She blew it out. I cut two slices.

We ate the cake at the kitchen table with two glasses of milk. The kitchen radio was on quiet. The Hank Williams Senior version of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry came on while we were eating, which Mama said was, quote, the wrong song for Valentine’s, and which I said was, quote, not the wrong song for our Valentine’s, and we both laughed at the table. The cake was deeply chocolate. The chocolate chips inside the cake melted into the warm interior. The frosting was thick and slightly bitter from the cocoa powder and slightly sweet from the powdered sugar, the way a good chocolate frosting should be.

The Saturday visit was the fifth. We drove to Tulsa Saturday morning at eight. The lobby line was the lobby line. Cody had gotten a haircut from one of the unit barbers Wednesday evening — the unit runs a barber program where the inmates with cosmetology training cut hair for the rest of the unit at a low cost — and the haircut made him look like himself again. He had been letting his hair get long since the arrest, and the cut was a clean short fade that made his face look open and rested in a way it had not since the spring.

I had brought him a small bag of those little candy hearts with the messages on them, the kind they sell at the grocery store for ninety-nine cents around Valentine’s. The unit’s rules say candy can come through if it is in original sealed packaging, which the bag was. He ate three of them at the table during the visit, reading the messages out loud. Be Mine. True Love. U R Cute. He laughed at the third one. He put the rest in his pocket. He said, tell Mama happy Valentine’s, Kay. I told her in the car on the way home and she squeezed the steering wheel for a second and nodded, and that was Valentine’s.

The cake is mostly gone. There is one slice left for tomorrow. Mama wore her Valentine’s glow into work Wednesday morning, the small kind of glow that comes from being seen on a holiday, even if the holiday was just a Tuesday night with a chocolate cake and the wrong song on the radio.

The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the box-cake improvement — one extra egg, less oil, milk instead of water, a tablespoon of vinegar. The cake comes out denser and more bakery-feeling than the regular box version, and the difference is, frankly, the difference. Make this on a Tuesday night for somebody you love. The candle does not need a birthday on it.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup strong brewed coffee, cooled
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9x13-inch baking pan, or line with parchment paper.
Mix dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt until evenly combined.
Mix wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, cooled coffee, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract.
Combine. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined — a few small lumps are fine. Do not overmix.
Add chocolate chips. Fold in 3/4 cup of the chocolate chips, reserving the remaining 1/4 cup for the top.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and scatter the reserved chocolate chips evenly over the top. Bake for 32—36 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs.
Cool and serve. Let the cake cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes before slicing. Serve warm or at room temperature — it’s wonderful both ways.

Nutrition (per serving)

Kathy’s Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cake — A Tuesday-Night Valentine’s for Two