Simple Cooking: Mint Chocolate Cake and Frosting

By Caitlin Klein in Food on Feb 17, 2011 8:00PM

Mint and Chocolate. Chocolate and Mint. These culinary best buddies come together in an easy-to-make cake recipe pulled from my grandmother’s cookbook, updated and re-created here for you, oh darling Chicagoist reader. File this one away for an upcoming chocolate-lover’s birthday.

Chicagoist’s Mint Chocolate Cake and Frosting

Cake Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour


• 2 cups white sugar


• ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons cocoa powder


• 2 teaspoons baking soda


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• ½ teaspoon salt


• 1 cup milk


• 1/2 cup vegetable oil


• 2 eggs


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• ½ teaspoon mint extract


• Butter, for greasing the pan (Grandma said use “lard,” but darn, we’re fresh out.)

Cake Directions
Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a large 9-inch cake pan. A springform pan is preferred, but you can do this in standard cake pans too. If you don’t have a big, deep 9-incher, two 8-inch ones will do. That’s what she said.

Sift together the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa, soda, baking powder, and salt). Put everything in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the milk, vegetable oil, and eggs. Add the vanilla and mint extract. Be careful not to add too much mint extract - it is really strong.

Add the batter to the greased pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a cake tester (or chopstick, in our case) comes out clean when inserted into the center. The center of this cake should rise quite a bit - it will need to be trimmed before frosting so you have a flat top to work with.

Frosting Ingredients

• 2 sticks of butter, at room temp or slightly chilled, plus:


• 2 tablespoons of butter, for melting


• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract


• ½ teaspoon mint extract


• 2 tablespoons milk


• 6 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips


• 1 pound powdered sugar

Frosting Directions
In a mixing bowl, mix the sticks of butter on high until it’s fluffy. Add the vanilla extract, mint extract, and milk and continue to mix. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate chips with the tablespoons of butter over a medium flame (modern-day chef, you can also do this in the microwave.) Stir constantly. Once melted, set aside to cool slightly. Gradually, add the powdered sugar to the butter and milk mixture until you achieve the desired consistency. We like our frosting to be fluffy and workable, so we added the whole pound of powdered sugar. At this point, set aside any white frosting you want to use for decorating details, probably about 1 cup. Last, stir in the melted chocolate mixture. Stick the whole bowl in the freezer to cool it; frosting will harden up as it cools.

Add it All Together
Using a broad, serrated knife, slice off the bump on the top of the cake so you have a flat working surface on which to frost. Feed that bump to children, or yourself, because there’s no sense in letting it go to waste.

Frost your cake with the chocolate frosting, and use your reserved white frosting for details.

Cake shown here with white chocolate chip detail.