Waldorf Astoria Cake

So it's time for my first official recipe blog! Jason and I had long overdue dinner plans with our good friends last Saturday night and we were asked to bring a dessert. Well...desserts are my absolute favorite part of cooking AND the largest section of Momou's clipped recipes so I couldn't have been happier. So I turned on a good movie fully expecting to pour over Momou's dessert recipes for a good hour or so until I found THE perfect dessert but it turned out that I found the perfect recipe only five minutes in! The name alone sounded great so I called off the search! I decided on a recipe for a Waldorf Astoria Cake. I scanned the recipe quickly and discovered that the cake would be nothing but homemade chocolatey goodness! Who could go wrong with that??? The recipe is below with my cooking experience following:

Waldorf Astoria Cake

Cake Ingredients:
1 stick butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup nuts
1/2 package chocolate chips
2 teaspoons vanilla

Cream butter and sugar. Add melted chocolate and eggs. Add sifted dry ingredients and milk alternately. Stir in vanilla and nuts. Bake about 1 hour at 350 degrees in tube pan.

Frosting Ingredients:
1 stick butter
1/2 package chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg white

Melt butter and chocolate. Add sugar and cream. Add egg white and beat until well mixed. Add lemon juice and rest of ingredients. Spread on cooled cake.

Okay, so here is how the story goes. First of all, from here on out I am going to read and re-read these old recipes. The gals from back in the day sure knew how to cook and they are the ones who refer to cooking instructions as "a little of this and a dash of that". Take a look at the ingredients for the frosting. Does it say anything about cream??? No! But it sure talks about cream in the frosting directions. So moral of the story is to read and re-read the recipe because there could be some surprise ingredients in store for you in the directions! Thankfully, I know a thing or two about cooking and I realized that I probably wouldn't need any cream because I have never used cream when making icing before. If I did need it then I would just use milk. So done, done and done! Next thing, make sure to put the top back on your BRAND new bottle of vanilla extract right after you finish using it. Otherwise you will knock the bottle right over and spill the extract in the middle of your cooking madness just as I did:( I used my new angel food cake pan for this recipe. That is as good as any tube pan! And frankly, a Bundt pan would work just as nice. My honey had bought me a fancy smancy angel food cake pan for my birthday in March in hopes that I would start making him angel food cake (he loves that stuff). Well, bless his little heart because it is now August and this experience was my first time to use my new angel food cake pan. Now before you judge me you must know that my honey does not lack for desserts around this house. I may not have made him angel food cake yet but I can promise that he has indulged in other good treats! I have just been looking for a delicious sounding angel food cake recipe to start out with which is why I have been waiting. If any of you have one then please feel free to send it over. Jason and I would both thank you! Speaking of hubby, if yours (or your significant other) decides to take a little nap while you are cooking this cake and you find yourself needing help rest assured you can manage on your own! I realized that I had cake batter all over the outside of the pan and inside the tube hole and that I should probably clean it off so it wouldn't burn it while in the oven. Well, this is kind of hard when you have to lift the filled pan over your head to wipe off messy batter on the outside of the pan. This is difficult because the filled pan is heavy and you need one of your hands to do the holding and the other to do the wiping. So...I just kind of balanced this pan on the edge of my head and I was perfectly able to see inside the tube hole and wipe it clean! Last but not least, I would suggest baking this cake for 50 minutes instead of an hour. I set the timer for one exactly hour because Momou had underlined AND rewritten "1 hour" so I figured I better listen to her. Well, maybe it is just our oven but I think the cake could have used less time in the oven. All in all, the cake was DELISH and well received by all! Just the sight of it was beautiful! Oh and the smell of the homemade chocolate frosting makes you just want to slap your mamma! This cake is perfect to serve to a crowd not only because it looks pretty but because it feeds many...I would say about 12. And do not be intimidated that this entire cake is made from scratch. It is so worth it and really not hard at all. Promise! Good luck and let me know if you have any thoughts or new ideas about this cake.
P.S. I used chopped walnuts and they were very yummy in this cake. But use whatever nuts you like or none at all!