Chocolate Cake (and Chocolate Frosting)

One of my favorite chocolate cake recipes is one where the cake is baked in a 9″x13″ pan and then you pour the warm chocolate frosting over it. The frosting hardens once cool, and you have instantaneous chocolate cake. (The cake is made with buttermilk, so it has that extra chocolate tang to it.)

The magic of baking is that you can convert this 9″x13″ pan recipe into a 2 9″ cake layers in order to make a layer cake out of it. But since the frosting can’t be used in a layer cake, you are “forced” to find another chocolate frosting recipe.

And so is born a chocolate layer cake with rich chocolate frosting. I still love the pan cake and will make that on a regular basis. But when you want a layer cake with that same buttermilk tang to it, the conversion and the substitution of one chocolate frosting for the other is quite straightforward.

The recipe for the cake and in-pan frosting is here:

The recipe for the substitute chocolate frosting (to be used for layer cakes) is here:

And a photo of the cake as a layer cake is here: