2022 - The Year Of Low Expectations

Quick & Easy Cake w/One Minute Chocolate Frosting

We are leaving 2021 in the dust and stepping into 2022. The best words I've heard about the new year is to make this the year of low expectations. (Look for @sarcasticlutheran post on Instagram for her full New Year blessing.) Yep. You read it right. Low expectations. We've had two years of things not going as planned and disappointment on top of disappointment and having hopes dashed. So this year, let's start out expecting so little of the world, of ourselves and of others, that when anything at all goes right, it is a reason for delight. I am okay with that.

But we did start our year as we always do. With the traditional black eyed peas and collards meal on New Year's Day. We eat peas to insure we have plenty of coins jingling in our pockets and the collards are for dollar bills—folding money. There were fewer of us around the table this time, so I made fewer side dishes. And we survived.

And again, as always, we celebrated Mommy's birthday. They so often are traveling home on her actual birthday that is has become our tradition to combine the New Year's Day meal with her birthday cake.

I spent a good bit of time yesterday trying to find this chocolate frosting recipe here on my blog. I've made it many times and just assumed (you know what they say about "assuming") that I had posted it here. It was nowhere to be found.

I finally looked in a couple of other places and found a old printed copy, complete with butter stains on the page. This is an old, old recipe that makes a fudge frosting that hardens about as quickly as you put it on the cake. That makes it a perfect match for a 9x13-inch sheet cake. I pour it on and spread it as fast as I can. I didn't even stop to push "cancel" on the timer. 

I found this recipe years ago when I didn't have the ingredients for some other favorite frostings. This uses the most basic of ingredients that I always have on hand. And now the recipe is safely tucked away here in the recipe index where I can find it next time.

ONE-MINUTE CHOCOLATE FROSTING

1 cup sugar granulated sugar

1/4 cup cocoa

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt butter in saucepan. Add sugar, cocoa, and milk to pan and stir. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil for 1 minute. Add vanilla. Remove from heat. Cool partially (not very long) and then beat with a mixer for 3 minutes or until spreadable consistency. Spread (or pour) on cake while the icing is still warm. It will get firm when it cools. 

I pour this over the 9x13 cake and work as quickly as possible. Next time I'll beat mine a little less than 3 minutes. 

Here is the cake I make most often. It never fails. 

QUICK AND EASY CAKE

2 cups self-rising flour 
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
1 cup milk
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla 

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Beat until well mixed. This can be baked in layers or a 9x13-inch pan. (Greased and floured, of course. Or, use baking spray.) Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, until golden brown and the top springs back when lightly touched.

There are a couple of other easy chocolate icing recipes here on the blog. And we also love the caramel frosting on this cake. We make the cake in layers for the caramel frosting.

I do not consider myself a cake baker, but with this basic cake recipe and these frosting recipes, I can get by.