Chocolate Cake Challenge

Jenna aka That Wife, posted a January food challege for chocolate cake and I just had to do it. Some of you may be thinking that making chocolate cake isn't that big of a deal, but the challenge wasn't to make your best Duncan Hines, it was for good old fashioned home made chocolate cake. My life now is much different than how I was raised, and when I saw Jenna's post it brought me back to my childhood. Actually, I think that just about every time I read her blog I am brought back in time. I was raised in a very close knit LDS family; a family that sat down to a home cooked meal for dinner every night, where mom didn't work and packed our lunches each morning before school, and one where the sweets were always home baked and never store bought. And though I am no longer LDS, I do still hold on strongly to those family values. Now that I am married and we are talking about starting a family, the need to bring back those family values is even stronger. My first step towards this -- making my favorite chocolate cake from when I was a kid. Just so you know, I have never made a cake from scratch before and I have never made frosting either, so this was truly a challenge. I never knew the name of it, I just knew it was always wonderfully moist. So, I called my mom and asked her if she still had the recipe, which she didn't but she said she would find it for me. Then, a few hours later there it was, a link in my mailbox for Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake! Yes, you read it right --Mayonnaise Cake! I called my mom to make sure it was the right recipe, or if maybe I was reading it wrong, but it was right. She simply asked me, "how do you make mayonnaise?", my answer, "ummm, I think it has eggs and oil in it", and then my mom said, "aren't there eggs and oil in cake?" So that was it, yes the best chocolate cake I've ever had is made with Mayonnaise. Since I've linked the recipe I won't go into details, so here are a few pictures to enjoy.

The two layers of the cake put together with frosting before the icing (I used an 8" pan instead of a 9", which gave it a little more height).

I grated a Hershey's bar over the top to finish it off and, since I don't have a cake plate, I covered cardboard with tinfoil.

No matter how much my husband and I love chocolate cake, I wasn't about to have an entire cake sitting in my house tempting us all weekend. So, I brought it to grandpa's 84th birthday party at BJ's. I love grandpa, he is actually my husband's grandpa, but since I never had one (my mom's dad died when she was 18, and my dad's dad died when my dad was 14) I have adopted him as my own!

Everyone loved the cake, but to be honest, I didn't tell them it was made with mayonnaise until after they ate it. My husband's family are all very picky eaters and had I told them before they ate it that it had mayonnaise in it the only one that would have taken a bite was Grandpa. So, after they all raved about it, I dropped the mayonnaise bomb - which led to a 20 minute discusion on what is in mayonnaise and why does it taste sour when the cake doesn't taste sour... anyway, they loved it and that's all that matters.

~ Calioc