Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake

This is a mid-century church-cookbook chocolate cake, the kind that shows up at potlucks and birthdays decade after decade for a reason. Simple pantry ingredients, one bowl of batter, and a surprise hit of crushed peppermint stick candy folded in at the end.

The peppermint is what makes this cake feel old-fashioned and Christmassy at the same time. Crushed candy canes or hard peppermint sticks melt partially into the batter as it bakes and leave tiny white pockets of minty crunch scattered through the crumb. If mint is not your thing, leave the candy out and you have a perfect plain chocolate cake.

The three-minute beat of butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla on high speed is the classic creaming shortcut. It replaces the more careful traditional method and still produces a tender, well-aerated crumb. Do not cut it short. Three full minutes.

Alternating the dry ingredients and water into the creamed butter keeps the batter from seizing. Start and end with the dry mixture, three additions of flour and two of water, and stop as soon as everything is blended.

Kitchen Tips

• Use natural (not Dutch-process) cocoa powder. The recipe relies on baking soda, which needs the acid in natural cocoa to rise properly.
• Room-temperature butter and eggs are a must. Cold butter will not cream properly and the batter breaks.
• Test for doneness with a wooden pick at 30 minutes. Overbaking a dry cake is the classic mistake.
• Cool in the pan for 10 minutes exactly. Longer and the cake steams and releases poorly; shorter and it tears.

Variations

• Skip the peppermint and fold in a cup of chocolate chips or chopped pecans.
• Frost with classic chocolate buttercream or a simple ganache.
• Bake as a 13×9 sheet and dust with powdered sugar for an easy weeknight dessert.