The weather got ya’ down? Need a sugary pick-me-up as we head into the weekend?
You need a slice of chocolate cake! Like, today!
Today, Jan. 27, is officially National Chocolate Cake Day. It commemorates the confectionary delight that’s been a part of American society for over 250 years.
It was discovered around 1764 that grinding cocoa beans between heavy stones produced cocoa powder, which could then become chocolate. Adding liquid turned it into a thick syrup to be poured into molds shaped like cakes, which were meant to be transformed into a beverage. But nobody thought to make it into a cake for another 80 years.
The first verifiable recipe for chocolate cake appeared when popular cookbook author Eliza Leslie published one in her 1847 cookbook. But it didn’t look anything like a cake from today — Leslie’s recipe called for chopped pieces of chocolate inserted into a plain sponge cake, instead of adding cocoa powder to the mix itself.
Over the years, authors and cooks such as Maria Parloa started adding the ideas of the modern version we’d recognize today: frosting, including de-fatted cocoa powder into the batter mix, and adding other fillings.
By the 1920s, manufacturers began to sell the recipe outright. O. Duff and Sons released the first boxed chocolate cake, ready to eat – no baking required. In 1947 and ‘48, Betty Crocker and Pillsbury each released their own pre-made chocolate cake mix. Ultimately, making chocolate cake became more straightforward. Almost anyone could do it, even if they lacked experience in the kitchen.
Chocolate cake became a part of the culture increasingly throughout the late twentieth cent ury and early 21st, leading to the development of National Chocolate Cake Day.
Do you need a chocolate cake recipe to bake to “celebrate” today’s “holiday”? For a list of delicious ones, including a dark chocolate torte, peanut butter chocolate cupcakes, a caramel turtle cake, and a mocha cake, go to https://bit.ly/3G2L7ou.
