Chocolate cake with Mocha Icing

I definitely recommend BOTH of these recipes.  The mocha icing with the chocolate cake is SO GOOD. Luckily for us I still have some cupcakes that I made with the extra batter and icing...which may or may not have been my breakfast this morning.

This was the finished decorated cake. 

There's also little flowers around the outside.

These pictures were my inspiration. I knew I wanted chocolate on chocolate so I google-imaged cakes with chocolate icing and went from there.  So many cute ideas out there!  Anyway, these are my wanna-be-like-those cupcakes.

ANYWAY - the recipes! 

Chocolate cake from the foodnetwork.com

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

• 2 cups sugar

• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

• 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

• 1 tsp. salt

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup milk

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil

• 1 tsp. vanilla

• 1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350°.  Prepare two 9 inch cake pans* by brushing on crisco, sprinkling with flour, then tapping out extra.  In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  In a small bowl combine eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla.  Beat well.  Slowly add boiling water and continue to mix.  Add wet ingredients to flour mixture and mix until smooth.  Pour batter into prepared pan(s).  Bake for:

9 x 1 1/2 in pans 30-35 minutes

9 x 2 in pans 40-45 minutes

*I decided after completing this recipe that every cake that I make from now on I am going to measure how much batter it makes and use this chart to help me figure stuff out.  I find it annoying that every recipe makes a different amount of batter, and I never know how much extra I'm going to have.  And prepare two 9 inch cake pans?  Do you mean two  9 x 1/2 inch?  Or two 9 x 2 inch?  Generally they mean 9 x 1/2 inch, but recently I've been into the 9 x 2 inch.  For this recipe, I used a 9 x 2 inch cake pan and made an additional 12 cupcakes.  

Wilton's Buttercream Mocha Icing

(I used the recipe we used in class but added chocolate and coffee as suggested on this site)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup solid white vegetable shortening

• 1 tsp. vanilla

• 8-9 tsp milk/coffee (split half and half, or add milk/coffee to taste)

• 1 lb. 10x sugar

• 1 Tbsp. Wilton Meringue Powder

• three 1 oz. unsweetened chocolate squares, melted (OR 3/4 cup cocoa)

Cream shortening, vanilla, and milk/coffee.  Add chocolate and continue to mix.  Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until thoroughly mixed.  Blend until creamy.  

One recipe of icing was enough for me to do everything you see in the pictures.  (Ice the cake, make a top and bottom border, ice some of my cupcakes, and practice my borders a little)

IMPORTANT!

This makes 2 1/2 cups STIFF icing. 

To make a border, make a design on your cupcakes, etc. with your icing you should make MEDIUM consistency icing by adding 1 tsp. of milk or coffee for each cup of STIFF icing that you are converting.

To ice your cake (or write on it) you should have THIN consistency icing.  Add 2 tsp. of water for every cup of STIFF consistency icing (that would be 5 tsp. for the full recipe)