A few Sunday’s ago I was craving some really good chocolate cake. I’m not talking about the stuff we can get a great deal on, that’s from a box. I’m talking about some fabulous tasting made from scratch chocolate cake! I found this recipe at AllRecipes.com and we’ve made it two Sundays in a row! In fact, it was our Easter Dessert! (No, it wasn’t pretty and pastel, but man it tasted good!). The first time we made it, we made the butter cream frosting too. It was good, but most of us ended up eating just the cake (because it was perfect all by itself)! The second time we made this delicious Chocolate Cake we put cool whip on top. It’s the perfect moist and dense chocolate cake! Rather than being overly rich, it’s just PERFECT! Next time I think I’ll chill it and and put chilled canned cherry pie filling and cool whip on the top!
Easy Chocolate Cake
2 cups white sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 9 inch cake pans (I just made mine in 9×13 baking pan and increased bake time to 42 minutes)
- In a medium bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla, mix for 3 minutes with an electric mixer.
- Stir in the boiling water by hand (make sure you mix it in well… the batter will look runny, but have faith… it’ll turn out!)
- Pour evenly into the greased pan(s)
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. (For the 9×13 cake pan I baked it for about 42 minutes… do the toothpick test, it should come out fairly clean).
- Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to cool completely. (I just leave mine in the pan)
- Delicious by itself, either slightly warm or even chilled! Try it with cool whip, or chilled pie cherries and cool whip!
Homemade Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting:
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
5 1/3 cups confectioners’ sugar
2/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Cream butter until light and fluffy
- Stir in the cocoa and confectioners’ sugar alternately with the milk and vanilla (I preferred a little less cocoa)
- Beat to a spreading consistency
Enjoy this FABULOUS cake!
{Pin This Now… you’ll be happy you did}
Pin It
About Cathy of Fabulessly Frugal
It all began on October 8th, 2008. Cathy and Monica started this coupon blog to help friends and family learn about their new money saving hobby couponing! Since then they have taught thousands of women (and men) 
I’m excited to see recipes like this on your site
I’m trying to get away from the ‘boxed’ desserts, but still want to do things frugally, so this helps. Thanks!
You bet Amy!
This recipe looks really yummy!….If you ever want to try another one go to daisybrand.com for their sour cream chocolate cake and chocolate frosting!! To DIE for!!! Just made it last night and I use whatever sour cream I have on hand.
Oh, that sounds YUUUMMMYYY! I just may have to do that. Thanks Lindsay!
Thank you! Homemade cake isn’t complicated like most think and tastes so much better then box!
Http://www.lovelypinkdiva.com
Amen sister!
I always add chocolate chips to my choco. cakes…yum yum! oh, dust with a little flour first before adding them at the end, so they won’t sink to the bottom of the cake pan
What a great tip! I’ve stopped adding choc chips to my cakes and cupcakes because of that very reason (falling to the bottom). Thank you – I’m going to do this next time!
Here’s a great peanut butter cookie recipe. This sounds weird but trust me!! It’s called “Three Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies” 1 cup white sugar/1 cup peanut butter/1 egg. That’s it! Mix it all together and drop by teaspoons on your cookie sheet. Bake @350 for 8-10 mins. They will be very soft and tend to “LOOK” a little raw but after cooling completley these are amazing!! Of course I double the recipe! If you like you can do the fork criss cross thing on top before baking and these are also Gluten Free. Very Frugal by the way!!!
Thank you Meg! We tried this and they were delicious! Thanks for sharing!
I love these. My Grams made them and we called them Cuppa Cuppa Egg peanut butter cookies!!!
This cake is the best!!! I made it in a bundt pan, either I didn’t get it well enough greased or the pan was a bad choice because it stuck but the cake was so good, much better than store bought. Rich and light: my husband loves it
SO glad you love it!!
I found this recipe doing a general Google search because I wanted to try my hand at a simple chocolate cake from scratch [my first!]. I used the batter for cupcakes and baked for 20 minutes, and they came out perfect. My coworkers loved them, too. Thanks for this!
Yay! I’m glad you found it!
We are one day post Hurricane Sandy and although we were blessed to not lose power being in the woods and all, I am feeling we need a little treat-my husband and kids and I. Looking forward to this cake today!
Yay April! So glad to hear it!
Just took it out of the oven, put a chocolate glaze on it and can’t stop sampling it from the pan! Kids LOVE it! Thanks so much for this!
So happy to hear this April!
Me and my son made this today and hands down the best chocolate cake I have had in years. Super easy and so very moist. I made a semi sweet scratch frostng to go on top that really balanced well. Thanks for the recipe, I am always looking for great scratch recipes to add to my arsenal.
Oh that sounds good Jennifer! Would love the recipe!
I made this cake last night and oh goodness it is YUMMY!!! I am saving this to be my go-to recipe for chocolate cake
Glad you were able to give it a try!
This is the exact same recipe as on the side of the hershey’s cocoa box ….
Wow! I didn’t know that, I found it on allrecipes.com and LOVE it!
yummy yea but i have a suggestion add homey for the sweenter its less fat n colries n real cholate with honey for frosting ,,,,
P.s i loved it , it inspises me alot ….
thnks
The cake itself was not what I was expecting and neither my husband nor I liked it better than a boxed cake, but I did like the frosting. The texture was just not as fluffy as I like cake.
Sorry to hear that. I guess we all have different tastes.
If you like a fluffier cake you can try whipping the wet ingredients instead of just mixing them. Then you can mix the dry ingredients in normally. I also use cream instead of milk and butter in place of oil. It adds more calories but honestly, it is chocolate cake lol!
I’m baking my first homemade cake this Friday for my sister’s birthday party Saturday! I’m using this recipe for both the cake and frosting! I’m excited to make it!! I’m thinking it will be loved by the family!
Yay! Let us know what they think!
Hi Cathy,
What would be the quantities of sugar, flour and cocoa in grams for this recipe. I am a naive baker and the details would really help…
I googled this conversion calculator for you: http://southernfood.about.com/library/info/blconv.htm
Thanks Cathy for the conversion calculator it really helped….
Do you recommend dip and scope method or spoon and level to measure ingredients for this recipe..
I’m not to fancy abt my measurements. I usually just dip my measuring cup in, scoop it out, shake it a bit, and then level it off.
Good luck!
Just put my choc cake in the oven, and it looks like its cooking from the center out? I hope it turns out good, first time doing it from scratch, husband is a cook/baker so got some pressure on me. Lol
How did it turn out?
I just made this and used organic coconut oil in place of the vegetable oil. Didnt frost it, just mixed a little powdered sugar and cocoa and dusted the top. BEST chocolate cake ever – so good!
Thanks for sharing Grace! I love to use coconut oil as a substitute in my recipes.
I used peanut oil and almond oil as substitutes-pnut oil worked great, almond not so good-I’m going to try almond/peanut combo next time. This is the BEST scratch cake I’ve found yet.
Great tips! Thanks Bob!
Great idea Grace! Glad you enjoyed the healthier version!
Thanks for that tip, Bob, I will try that. I am changing my lifestyle so this favorite cake of mine does not get made as much. I would love to make it with more healthy ingredients. Then again, maybe just best to splurge once in awhile and face the fact that delicious cake is just not healthy
This cake was unbelievably good. I actually took it to a dessert party, untested and untried, and didn’t acknowledge that it was mine (just in case it was awful!) People were going nuts over it! I didn’t use your icing … the 5-1/2 cups of icing sugar kind of put me off, so I found another recipe online and adjusted it with less icing sugar and more cocoa. And it was just perfect.
Yes, I decided I don’t care for that frosting either. Glad you found something better!
I love this cake recipe and I use a chocolate pudding (or mousse box mix) frosting. It’s super simple and quite light. For the extra chocolatey goodness!!
My favorite is adding crushed fruit on top of it. I’ve used blackberries, raspberries or strawberries and they are all delicious. yum yum.
1 box of pudding (or mousse)
1 c cold milk
1/4 c powdered sugar (confectioners sugar)
1 small tub of cool whip
Mix the first two, then add the sugar, last add the cool whip.
Oh that sounds divine Sarah! I’m going to have to try that next time!! Thank you for sharing!
Here’s a picture of it that I made tonight
Oh my goodness! I may have to do that tomorrow!!! My mouth is watering now!
Let me know how you like it!
(I notice the picture didn’t show up, here’s a link to it: http://i.imgur.com/ca0JyyB.jpg )
I forgot to add that the above pudding frosting is made for the cake to be eaten in a day if you spread it on there. Otherwise what I do is make it and store it in a container, spooning it out onto the cake upon eating.
Oh, great tip. Thanks again!
making cake now hope it turns out
How did it turn out?
Yeah no wonder it’s good because it’s got 2 cups of sugar in it.
But of course!
The cake is easy to make but it exploded in my oven. I advise you to watch the cake very well and do not use a 9×12 pan in the oven it overflows.
as for the exploding cake-use a cookie sheet to catch run-over but most of all, I found this makes enough batter to do (2) 9 inch rounds and one 8 inch-fill the pans NO MORE than 1/3, 1/4 really works best-if they run over they vent the gas and don’t rise properly-use this method for a fluffy cake!
Decided to make a cake for my wife’s birthday. I halved the recipe and used one 9×9 pan. Luckily I was reading through these comments and saw someone saying it went all over the oven. I had thought it looked pretty full in the pan… I checked it at about 17 minutes in and, yep!, it was right up to the edge. I got a cookie sheet under it and a few minutes later, it is indeed all over! I don’t care, I am sure it will be so good that it won’t matter a bit. And I get dibs on the drippings off the cookie sheet, too.
Total failure. I don’t know why you can’t use half the recipe in a pan that’s about 2/3 the size, but it doesn’t work. -sigh-
That’s a bummer! I don’t understand why this is happening to either of you. I make it all the time in a regular full sized cake pan with no issues at all.
I find that interesting. I have made this cake for years and years and years
in many different size pans. My sister and I use to do cake decorating. I have put small amounts in cupcake, 6 inch and double plus in large sheet cake pans. Sorry for your failure, don’t give up. Too great of a cake not to make it.
I have been making this cake for years. It is from the Hershey’s Cocoa container. And I think the frosting may be too. It is called Hershey’s Easy Does it Recipe #11. But will say it is the best chocolate cake recipe ever.
Yes, best ever!!! This is my all time favorite Hershey’s Chocolate Cake. I only use a half batch of the frosting on the Hershey’s can. Dark chocolate cake with creamy icing, wonderful and very satisfying.
Wow! I didn’t know that! I just found it on allrecipes.com. Of course it would be Hershey’s… it’s soooo good!
Like I said, I have been making this cake for years and I mean years! Every time I make it people love it! And I always tell them how ridiculously easy it is. My grandma when watching my sister and I make it once kept saying we must be doing something wrong because the batter was so thin
Yep, very thin batter. I mix the dry ingredients and keep in air tight containers so to have a homemade “boxed cake mix” on hand. Now with pinterest my favorite cake that I was so popular for might not be the surprise hit of events anymore 
I love baking from scratch and have never enjoyed using the box recipe because I baked with my grandmother and mother from the very beginning. You were right that the batter looked a little runny, but it did pull through!!! So excited that I found such a delicious cake mix and an easy buttercream frosting. Thank you so much! Will definitely be making it again.
Happy to hear it!
I’ll have to try that! If you’d like a good scratch frosting recipe that is also easy and fudgier than buttercream (this recipe reminded me of it with the boiling water) try this:
No-Cook Fudge Frosting (from BH&G cookbook)
4 3/4 c pd sugar
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa pd
1/2 c butter, softened
1/3 c boiling water
1 tsp vanilla
Comb. first 2 ingred., add butter, boiling water and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on low til combined. Beat for 1 min. on medium. Cool for 20-30 min or until mixture reaches spreading consistency.
Yum! Thank you!
I made this cake for dessert last night to thank a friend for helping us out when we were away. My friend and everyone else that tried the cake LOVED it! They all said that it was the best chocolate cake that they have ever had!! Thank you.
You’re welcome! My mouth is watering for it right now!
I love making things from scratch, it’s nice to not have all the artificial stuff. This recipe looks so good!
You’ll love it!
Followed this to a T. Absolutely delicious!!
Awesome!