Recipes / Family recipes
Mother's Birthday Favorite · Made Repeatedly · Printable
Chocolate Salad Dressing Cake
The chocolate birthday cake the creator's mother always requested, served with chocolate fudge frosting.
Cake ingredients
- 2½ cups flour
- 1¼ cups sugar
- ⅓ cup Hershey's cocoa
- 1½ teaspoons baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup salad dressing (mayonnaise-style prepared salad dressing; not mayonnaise and not Miracle Whip)
- 1 cup cold water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
To finish
Chocolate fudge frosting, as always requested by the creator's mother. The frosting's own recipe and amounts are not recorded on this page.
Directions
- Stir together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt.
- Stir in salad dressing, cold water and vanilla until well mixed.
- Pour into greased and floured 9-inch cake pans, as written in the notebook (number of pans not specified).
- Bake at 400°F for 35–40 minutes, according to the notebook.
- Allow cakes to cool before applying chocolate fudge frosting.
Family history
This cake was the creator's mother's favorite birthday cake. It was the only cake she wanted her daughter to make for her birthday, and it had to be chocolate cake with chocolate fudge frosting. The creator always used Hershey's cocoa. She emphasizes that the “salad dressing” ingredient was a mayonnaise-like product labeled salad dressing, but was neither ordinary mayonnaise nor Miracle Whip. The original family version is preserved without substitutions.
The notebook does not identify the specific brand of salad dressing or provide a separate chocolate fudge frosting formula. The written time and temperature are preserved; check for doneness as actual pan depth can vary.