Special Dark Mocha Chip Cake

A moist dark chocolate cake with a creamy mocha frosting topped with chopped chocolate chips.

I recently purchased a Hershey's cookbook.  It contains over 475 recipes so I'm in heaven.  As soon as I brought it home I sat down and read the whole thing.  I can't wait to try all of the chocolaty recipes.  My first recipe from this book is this cake (of course I have trouble following directions so I made some changes).  I wasn't going to make a cake for my birthday since my husband was out of town and it's just me, but I couldn't resist.  This is only an 8-inch square cake so it was perfect for me.  I had a piece of cake for breakfast every morning for a week so the mocha was awesome.  This is my take on the Hershey's Cocoa Cake.  In the book, it has a crunchy nut and coconut topping which looks and sounds great, but it was my birthday cake and not exactly what I wanted.  So I made a chocolate buttercream frosting spiked with espresso.

Cake makes great breakfast especially w/ espresso in it.  [Tweet this]

Special Dark Mocha Chip Cake

modified slightly from Hershey's Cocoa Cake

 Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup Hershey's Special Dark cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup kefir (or buttermilk)
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp coconut oil
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mocha Chip Frosting:

1 stick butter
2 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp-1/4 cup Special Dark cocoa
1-2 tsp espresso
up to 1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk, or regular milk
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips, chopped (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F (or 325 if using a glass pan) and grease and flour an 8 by 8-inch, square, baking pan.

In a large bowl stir together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.  Add kefir, oil, vanilla and egg.  Beat just until batter is smooth and well blended. Then pour into the prepared pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Remove from oven and let cool.

Meanwhile, make the frosting.  Cream together the butter, cocoa and espresso.  Add the powdered sugar and enough milk to bring to a spreadable consistency (if too wet add more sugar, or more milk if too dry).

Spread the frosting on the cooled cake and top with chopped chocolate chips (I did this mainly to keep the plastic wrap from sticking to the frosting when I covered the cake, but it tasted great).  Allow to cool completely before serving (I was greedy and tried to cut a piece before it was completely cool and my piece fell apart...it tasted great but it was a mess the picture's below).  Cut into 9 pieces and enjoy.