Recipe — Hot Fudge Cake and Icing (aka the Nadine Spanner Chocolate Cake)

My daughter came home for her birthday last week, and it was a delight to have her visit. But that meant my husband and I had to make a birthday cake.

I’ve mentioned the decadent Nadine Spanner Chocolate Cake in an earlier post. It is the “go to” cake in our family when we’re willing to spend a little extra time baking. It is gooey and chocolaty and rich and Very Bad For You. But all of us love it, except for our son, who isn’t really into chocolate. (I would suspect that he was changed at birth, except he’s built just like my husband.)

Nadine Spanner was a friend of my parents. Her husband Jack taught me to waterski when no one else could. It took most of a week for him to get me up on skis, and that was my second or third summer of trying. He was incredibly patient with my fourteen-year-old klutzy self. Every time we make this cake, I think of both Spanners and all their children and the summers we spent on Coeur d’Alene Lake.

My mother made this cake often, but I don’t recall my father ever making it, even after he took over the household cooking responsibilities in his retirement. So the responsibility for baking it shifted from their generation to mine many years ago. In our household, my husband makes it more often than I do. (He likes to bake more than I do and he is better at following recipes.)

Me, with a Hot Fudge Cake on my birthday several years ago (half size)

Here is the recipe for what we call “the Nadine Spanner Chocolate Cake,” though the recipe card my mother wrote out calls it “Hot Fudge Cake and Icing.” I’m listing the full cake recipe, which fills a 9×13 pan and will feed a lot of people. We usually halve the recipe and put it in an 8×8 or 9×9 pan. Fewer calories to work off.

Hot Fudge Cake and Icing

For the cake:

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup boiling water
1 tsp soda
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour (I use general purpose flour)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix shortening, sugars, eggs, chocolate, buttermilk, vanilla and salt.
3. Add water and soda, mix quickly.
4. Add flour fast.
5. Pour into greased and floured 9×13 pan, then bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

For the icing (make this as soon as the cake comes out of the oven — it needs to go on while the cake is still hot)

15 Tbsp sugar (1 cup minus 1 Tbsp)
1/2 cup cream (canned milk)
3 Tbsp butter (or margarine)
3/4 cup chocolate chips
8 oz. chopped nuts (optional)

1. Melt and boil sugar, cream, and butter for 2 minutes.
2. Add chocolate chips.
3. Pour onto cake fast while hot.
4. Add nuts on top if you want (I like almonds, but pecans or walnuts are fine also. And my daughter doesn’t like nuts, so this time we omitted them.)