House Beautiful

Recipe of the Week: Chocolate Mayo Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

Ok, I know what you’re thinking.  Mayo cake?  As in, the stuff you put on sandwiches???  Well… almost.  Technically there’s Miracle Whip in it…  And oh yeah, it’s incredible.

This recipe was passed down from my Grandma Brown, or “Meesheez Brown” as Steph endearingly called her.  Check out the below pic of my grandma as a young thang living in San Diego in the early 50s (wearing red).  She was the epitome of the Covet Living theme.  She loved life and grabbed it by its horns!  And boy, did she know how to cook.

This chocolate mayo cake is a rich, moist cake with a sweet, creamy icing that’s straight up ADDICTIVE.  I like to think of it as a decadent alternative to the standard store-bought cakes – and it’s just as easy to make, with basic ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen.

On a side note, every year when I’m home for the holidays, I get to celebrate my younger brother Evan’s birthday.  Not only does he request this gooey cake each year, but he asks my mom to decorate it in the most off-the-wall styles.  For instance, two years ago he requested his cake be shaped into a blue Selsun Blue shampoo bottle (I couldn’t make this up).  This past year, a gekko crawling through the sand.

Always the caring matriarch, my mom artfully crafted the below cake, complete with a long red licorice tongue reaching out to grab a fly (made from a raisin).

We sat around for a couple days, stealing bites off the gekko here and there, relishing the dense yet fluffy, sweet and a *teensy* bit tangy cake.

For those of you who are needing to make a cake for a birthday, cupcakes for a special occasion, or heck – for any of you wanting to sit around in your sweatpants this weekend, watch some old movies on TBS and devour some delicious treats (I’m not judging), this recipe’s for you:

FOR THE CAKE

Mix together:

  • 2 C flour
  • 1 C sugar
  • 4 TBSP Hershey’s cocoa
  • Then add:

  • 1 C Miracle Whip
  • Then dissolve:

  • 1 C lukewarm water, and
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • Blend this with above ingredients

    Then add:

  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • Bake the cake at 375 degrees for approximately 35 minutes or until done.
    FOR THE ICING

  • 2 C powdered sugar
  • 2 softened blocks of cream cheese
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • I usually double the ingredients for the icing, because, well, I REALLLLY like the icing.

    And of course, accompany with a frosty cup of milk.

    Enjoy, and have a great weekend everyone!

    xoxo,

    2 Responses to “Recipe of the Week: Chocolate Mayo Cake with Cream Cheese Icing”


    • For the record, mayo is genius. there is a small place called PORTILLOS that took the creative genius of mayo + cake one step further…they took a slice of choco cake (made with mayo) and blended it with ice cream and milk to produce….a cake shake. GENIUS!!!

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