A Perfect Baker's Dozen

by Terese
 

Pretty late Tuesday night I got a special request for chocolate cupcakes for the following evening. Seeing as I teach and work on Wednesday's, I knew fitting in a complicated chocolate cake recipe in an hour and then decorating them in a manner that won't embarrass myself was kinda out of the question. PLUS I was out of butter. F***. What to do?! What to make?!

One Bowl Chocolate Cake of course. The recipe has the shortest list of ingredients possible, only uses one bowl and tastes better than any mix would. And it would leave me enough time to throw together a frosting  and make these little babies beautiful. Or as beautiful as could be expected after a 10 hour day and with only 20 min. Mission accomplished.

One-Bowl Chocolate Cake

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup Kahlua or coffee (optional, if not gonna use then just do 3/4 cup milkie)

1 egg

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

• Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa, soda, powder and salt in an electric mixing bowl. 
• Add the milk, Kahlua (if using), egg, oil and vanilla. 
• Beat on medium speed for 2 min. 
• Scrape down bowl, then beat for another 2 min. 
• Pour into 12 paper-lined muffin tins. The recipe filled them up perfectly, hence the perfect this baker's dozen. 
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 min. 
• Allow to cool, then frost. 

I used the Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Frosting recipe off that back of the box because I needed something that didn't use too much butter. (Aaron stole me one single stick from his mom, don't tell anyone.)  

That's it. Maybe not the most exciting thing I've ever made, but they took me all of 1 hr total and they looked pretty... pretty... pretty... nice.