Best Chocolate Cake Ever

I just made a chocolate cake. It’s absolutely the best cake in the world; it has an old-fashionedy, magic taste, indescribable and addictive. I always feel like making it around Thanksgiving time, because it’s my grandmother’s recipe and it reminds me of her. She was a wonderful lady, patient, serene and soft-spoken, with a fascinating past I never knew about until I was grown.

She was born Ina May Lewis on a dairy farm in Indiana in 1895; after her father and siblings died of typhoid, she became a schoolteacher. She had a one-room schoolhouse, and then moved to Indianapolis, where she taught Spanish. She had a platonic, letter-writing relationship with Charles Lindbergh. “Will you fly with me to Mexico?” he flirted on a postcard. She was a suffragette. We have pictures of her with some very stern-looking women in billowing black; in one, Ina May rocks a kind of Peter Pan look, with pants and a jaunty cap. She was into fashion. I have a picture of her in a bathing suit, rowing on a river (around 1920), where she looks fit and happy in the sunshine.

She didn’t marry until she was 36, very unusual back then. My grandpa, Raymond Fox, was a postman and veteran of World Wars I and II (he played the coronet in the Navy band). He was a widower with a teenager, my Aunt Jenny, who passed away last year. My mom was born to Ina and Raymond in 1935. My stepfather always jokes that it was this chocolate cake that made him want to marry my mom (along with her sailboat). And I made it for my husband after I met him as well. You can be a feminist, bake a cake and eat it too. Why not? Well, here's the man (or woman)-catchin' cake of all time. Or just enjoy it on Thanksgiving. Your family and friends will love it.


Ina May’s Magic Cake

For some reason, it comes out best if you mix it by hand in a crockery bowl with a wooden spoon, like Grandma did.

Step 1— Put 1 t. white vinegar in 1/2 cup whole milk and set aside.
Step 2— Melt 1 stick margarine (or butter) with 3 T. Hershey’s cocoa powder and stir till smooth. Take off fire and add 1 cup cold water. Set aside.
Step 3— In mixing bowl: 2 cups sugar, 2 cups flour, pinch salt, 1 t. cinnamon, 1 t. baking soda. Stir and add step 2 to step 3. Beat till smooth.
Step 4— Add 2 eggs and 1 t. vanilla. Beat till smooth.
Step 5— Add Step 1 and beat till smooth.

Pour into 3, 9” greased and floured cake pans. Bake in preheated oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

(Note: the mixture will be thin, almost runny, but that’s o.k. It rises. Also, you can exchange the 3 pans for one large-ish flat one, 16 or 18 inches, if you don’t want a layer cake. It will come out about brownie-high.)

Frosting
This can be done by hand or in Cuisinart or mixer.
While cake is baking, melt 1 stick margarine (or butter) with 3 t. Hershey’s cocoa powder.
Take off fire and add 1 box confectioner’s sugar, a little at a time alternately with 2 or 3 T. milk.
Beat, beat, beat, till smooth.

When cake comes out, poke holes in it with a toothpick and frost while hot. If making layer cake, frost between layers, stack, and then frost top.

Mmmm.