Mistake Cake

Author: Alex and Marissa Recker

On the night before Rodney's fourth birthday, Marissa found this random chocolate cake recipe to try. To help save time while prepping for the party, I set up the ingredients for her ahead of time. But I spaced out and omitted about 80% of the cocoa powder from the recipe, and you can imagine our surprise when our chocolate cake came out vanilla (with just the faintest tint of hidden chocolate). We tried the correct recipe for his party a few days later, and we found we actually preferred the "mistake cake" version over the actual chocolate cake recipe.

Bake in two buttered and floured pie dishes and stack the final pieces on top of each other. If you'd like, seal the pieces together with frosting or fruit, and I suspect since it's technically both vanilla and chocolate cake, it will pretty much go with anything and make everyone happy.

Materials

  • all purpose flour (2 cups)
  • sugar (2 cups)
  • baking powder (2 tsp)
  • baking soda (1.5 tsp)
  • unsweetened cocoa powder (1 tsp)
  • kosher salt (1 tsp)
  • butter milk (1 cup)
  • vegetable oil (0.5 cup)
  • eggs (2)
  • vanilla extract (2 tsp)

Procedures

Preheat oven to 350 F

  1. Add flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder, and kosher salt to a bowl or mixer. Stir to Combine.

  2. While mixing, add eggs, oil, vanilla extract, and buttermilk.

  3. Over a period of five minutes, slowly add 1 cup of boiling water while mixing.

  4. Pour the batter out into two lightly buttered and floured 9 inch cake pans.

  5. Bake for 30 minutes at 350F. Allow it to cool in the pan.

References