Let Them Eat Cake

Cat was wondering if anyone had a good, moist chocolate cake recipe.  So I asked my mother.  She says the recipe on the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa can is her favorite.

She went on to say that where it comes to cake you have do a balancing act between ingredients that tenderize and those that provide structure.  If you add more of something that tenderizes then you have to also increase whatever gives structure.

The tenderizers are oil, shortening, and sugar
The structure providers are eggs and flour

So if you use more oil and/or sugar then you also have to use more egg and/or flour or it’ll fall apart.  Too much Four or egg for the sugar or oil and it gets tough.  If you increase the water or milk instead of the oil or sugar to make it moist, the center will fall.  She says shortening makes the cake finer, but the oil gives more of a feeling of moisture even as it makes the cake heavier.

Apple sauce can be used in place of some of the oil/shortening but don’t try to replace it all our you end up with “an inferior product.”

And that’s bound to be more than you really wanted to know about cake.

Alice