Sugar Shock

I made Easter dinner for the family this year. There were 10 of us, and even though I was going completely insane getting everything cleaned, cooked, and baked, it turned out pretty good. We had some good sweet ham, chicken, broccoli, candied carrots, corn, garlic potatoes, and homemade bread. And the ham gravy. Don't get me started on gravy. The only time my true Pennsylvania Dutch nature surfaces is when there's gravy on the table. I could have a dinner of gravy and bread and be completely satisfied.

I was contemplating what to make for dessert - my mom was bringing pistachio pudding, but of course we need more than one dessert! (I was forgetting about the 10 pounds of Easter candy my mom was also bringing over).

So I made a Butter Pound Cake - always a favorite - with some strawberries and syrup for topping. That satisfied Dave, who -gasp!- does not like chocolate, but I was feeling the need to satisfy the die hard chocoholics in the family. So I searched allrecipes.com and came up with Hershey's 'Perfectly Chocolate' Chocolate Cake.

Oh. My. God.

Sugar Shock is too mild a term. My teeth hurt from eating this cake. But it was quite good, so I thought I'd share the recipe. Again, it's not my own recipe, I found it online, and it probably even originates with Hershey's, I'm not sure. But here goes:

Cake Batter
2 cups white sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

Chocolate Icing
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup Hershey's Cocoa Powder
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions
Heat oven to 350F. Grease and flour three 8-inch round baking pans.
Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water - the batter will be thin. Pour batter into pans.
Bake 30 - 35 minutes or until a cake pick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, and remove from pans onto wire racks. Cool completely.

To make icing, melt the butter and stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to a good spreading consistency. Add additional milk, if necessary (I added at least 1/4 cup additional milk to make it nice and creamy). Stir in vanilla.

Assemble each layer with icing in between each - trim down the sides of the cake if any layer turns out larger than the other. Then frost the assembled cake.

Warning: be careful when removing cooled layers from the wire racks - mine tended to stick a bit. If I would have been less careful, the layers could have broken into many pieces.

This cake was thoroughly delicious, and I think I have eradicated the need to have any kind of sugar or chocolate product for the next month, at least.