Trina's Easy Dark Chocolate Cake

This recipe comes from my good friend Trina Bond. Her new recipe blog can be found here: Trina's Food Adventures. This is actually the only recipe she has on the blog so far, and if her other recipes are as good as this, I'll be stalking her blog forever, ha ha. The icing recipe will be in the next post.

1/2 cup cocoa

milk (see note below)

4 tablespoons Crisco or butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg yolk

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a 1 cup measure, put cocoa powder; add a small amount of hot water and stir until cocoa dissolves. Fill remainder of measuring cup with milk to bring the measurement to 1 cup total.

Combine flour, salt and baking soda, mixing will. Set aside.

Beat shortening or butter and sugar, add egg yolk, beating for one minute. Stir in vanilla and remaining ingredients. Mix for one minute.

Turn batter into a buttered brownie or cake pan which has been lightly dusted with cocoa (shake out any excess cocoa).

Bake for about 40 minutes or until cake tests done.

Notes: I don't know how much hot water I used...I just put in enough to make the cocoa smooth and wet. Also, in my oven it only took 30 minutes for the cake to cook, so make sure to check the cake before the 40 minute mark, particularly if you have an oven that runs a bit hot.