Chocolate Skillet Cake

You'll notice a piece is missing. It's hard to get a picture
of a whole chocolate skillet cake. You go get the camera
and by the time you get back it looks like this.

Today's recipe is not low fat, sugar free or vegan. It goes a long way because it's kind of rich. You need an iron skillet to cook it properly. I make it pretty regularly, but it never lasts very long. It's a nice moist, crumbly single layer cake. Just leave it in the skillet and server it from there. This one you'll want to take to a potluck sometime for the dessert table. Just cut it in pretty small pieces. Like I said, it's kind of rich.

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup sugar
• dash salt
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Frosting Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
• 3-4 tablespoons milk (as needed for consistency)
• 1/2 cup pecans, chopped
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, sugar, and salt together and set aside.
2. In a 10-inch cast iron skillet, bring the butter, vegetable oil, cocoa powder, and water to a boil. Remove it from the heat and whisk in the dry ingredients well. Mix in the buttermilk, egg, and vanilla. Bake in the skillet cake at 350 degrees F for about 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with just a few moist crumbs.
3. While the cake starts to cool, make the frosting. In a medium saucepan, bring the butter, cocoa, and milk to a boil. Remove them from heat and add the sugar, nuts, and vanilla to the hot frosting mix. Stir to combine. Pour over the warm cake, spread with a spatula, and serve with vanilla bean ice cream, caramel sauce or whipped cream.

Serving suggestions:

• Ice cream
• Caramel sauce (this one is delicious!)
• Whipped cream

Note: 

If you let the frosting boil a bit longer,
when it cools it's like a stiff Hershey bar top.

If you bring the frosting to a rolling boil it will give you a frosting the consistency of a chocolate candy bar as shown to the right. Man, that's just the literal frosting on the cake. Like I said I'm not a big cake fan nor much overwhelmed by chocolate, but this stuff is like catnip for people around our house. I made it yesterday. There are only two of us. I'm a diabetic and can't eat this and there's almost 2/3 of it gone today. I'm taking extra Glipizide. And before you say it, I know. I was weak!

It's as good as it looks. It's kind of a cross between chocolate cake and a frosted brownie.

Tom