One-Bowl Chocolate Fudge Cake

I needed to make a birthday cake, so I hunted in my cookbooks for an easy recipe that wasn't too sweet, as I planned to ice it. And of course, I prefer chocolate - my favorite!

I found this easy chocolate fudge cake recipe in a Betty Crocker cookbook. (It's called "Cocoa Fudge Cake.")  All the ingredients go into the mixing bowl at the same time:

2 cups (500 ml) flour
1 1/2 cups (375 ml) sugar
2/3 cup (150 ml) cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoon (8 ml) baking soda
1 1/2 cups (375 ml) buttermilk or sour milk
1/2 cup (125) butter or shortening
2 eggs
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 40 minutes, or until done.

The only problem I encountered was that the shortening kept sticking to the beaters and didn't want to blend.

So the one thing I'd do differently next time is use a more traditional cake mixing method (blending the sugar, eggs and shortening first - then adding the other ingredients and mixing well). Alternately, I guess, one could melt the butter or shortening.

But the cake was delicious. I highly recommend it: Very chocolatey but not too sweet. (Ours was supposed to look like "Garfield" - the cartoon cat... But from this angle, it reminds me of Ned Flanders, another cartoon character!)