Need a great cake from scratch recipe

[Anonymous]

My kids love to help to cook. The box cakes are pretty simple. I'd like to do something from scratch where there are more ingredients for them to help measure and put in. We have a bunch of cookbooks (most never used) that have cake recipes in them but I can't really judge which ones would be good or not.

Does anyone have a great from scratch cake recipe? Chocolate would be great and a recipe that is more moist and can translate well to cupcakes would be great.

[Anonymous]

This is a great recipe, but might be too much chocolate for kids:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Double-Chocolate-Layer-Cake-101275

Epicurious recipes are from Gourmet, Bon Appetit and a few other magazines and the reviews are usually pretty useful.

[Anonymous]

I've made this cake many times. You can find it on the Hersheys Coco tin.

http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipes/detail.asp?id=4608

[Anonymous]

Love the Barefoot Contessa's chocolate cake recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/beattys-chocolate-cake-recipe/index.html

[Anonymous]

On the Food Network site, you can get Tyler Florence's Ultimate Chocolate Cake.

I have made it for DH's birthday several times, and it is AWESOME.

[Anonymous]

This is my favorite homemade cake. It is for the McCall's Perfect Chocolate Cake:

http://www.recipesource.com/baked-goods/desserts/cakes/chocolate/01/rec0136.html

Enjoy!!

[Anonymous]

Barefoot Contessa's coconut cake (and cupcakes) are devine!

[Anonymous]

The Magnolia Bakery vanilla cupcake recipe is really delicious... but if you want chocolate, I think the Hershey's recipe is good - closer to the boxed kind than some other recipes, and tends to be more moist because it's oil instead of butter-based. The batter is really runny but that's how it's supposed to be.

[Anonymous]

Any America's Test Kitchen recipie is great. They have a publication called Cooks Illustrated that has recipies in it and we've never had a bad recipie. I'm not sure if you can acutally download the recipies, but here's a link anyhow:

http://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipe_subcat.asp?categoryid=49,23,31&cat=17

[Anonymous]

This is from Simply Recipes http://simplyrecipes.com. It is wonderful and great for the season.

Mrs. Paxton's Raw Apple Cake

Preparation time: 20 minutes to prepare, 1 hour to cook, 30 minutes to cool.
Ingredients

Cake:

* 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (we use grapeseed oil)
* 2 cups of sugar
* 3 eggs, slightly beaten
* 3 cups of white flour
* 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 3 cups chopped, peeled apples (varieties that are good for baking - i.e. Granny Smith, Gravenstein, Fuji)
* 1 cup of coconut (the sweetened fresh grated, not the dried. If you use dried, soak first in water.)
* 1 cup of chopped nuts - walnuts or pecans


Glaze:

* 1/2 stick sweet butter
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 3 tablespoons milk

Method

1 Preheat oven to 350 degree F.

2 Beat together the sugar and oil. Add the eggs. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add dry ingredients to oil sugar eggs mixture in thirds, beating to incorporate after each addition. Mix in the vanilla, apples, coconut, and chopped nuts.

3 Bake in a greased and floured bundt cake pan about 1 hour. Test around the centers with a long thin bamboo skewer or toothpick to make sure the cake is done.

4 When cool enough to handle, gently remove from pan. Let sit on a rack to cool completely. If the dough has raised substantially around the middle areas of the bundt ring, you may need to use a bread knife to gently level off the cake so that it sits even.

5 Blend glaze ingredients and cook until melted. Place the cake on its serving dish. Prick all around the top of the cake with a fork so that when the glaze is applied it easily seeps into the cake. Use a pastry brush to apply the glaze liberally around the surface areas of the cake, or use a spoon to dribble the glaze on the cake.

[Anonymous]

I make the apple cake minus the coconut-it is SO good! It is great for fall!