caraway-and-rye

King Bakery Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

The 8 qt column is the source of truth. Every other column is scaled exactly from it — ½, ¼, ⅛, ³⁄₃₂ and ¹⁄₁₆ respectively — rather than transcribed from the smaller columns on the original card. Where the card’s own numbers had been rounded to something weighable in ounces, those roundings have been dropped; see Notes.

Liquids are given by volume, as in the original — see Notes on why they haven’t been converted to weight. Conversions use 1 lb = 453.592 g, 1 oz = 28.3495 g, 1 US qt = 946.353 mL, 1 US cup = 236.588 mL.

Batter — Stage 1: mix 3 minutes on low speed

Ingredient	8 qt	4 qt	2 qt	1 qt	¾ qt	½ qt
Granulated Sugar	7257g	3629g	1814g	907g	680g	454g
Cake Flour or plain flour †	5443g	2722g	1361g	680g	510g	340g
Sweetex	2155g	1077g	539g	269g	202g	135g
Unsweetened Cocoa	1361g	680g	340g	170g	128g	85g
Baking Powder (Rumford)	227g	113g	56.7g	28.3g	21.3g	14.2g
Baking Soda	227g	113g	56.7g	28.3g	21.3g	14.2g
Large Eggs	1893mL (32)	946mL (16)	473mL (8)	237mL (4)	177mL (3*)	118mL (2)

* The original card annotates this column “4 large eggs”. The bakery’s own 16-eggs-per-quart convention gives exactly 3 at 3/16 qt, which is what is used here. Counts assume Irish large eggs — see Baking this in Ireland.

† Chlorinated cake flour cannot be sold in the EU. In Ireland, substitute oven-treated plain flour — see Baking this in Ireland.

Batter — Stage 2: add VERY SLOWLY, then mix 3 minutes on medium

Ingredient	8 qt	4 qt	2 qt	1 qt	¾ qt	½ qt
Hot Water	1893mL	946mL	473mL	237mL	177mL	118mL
Salt	113g	56.7g	28.3g	14.2g	10.6g	7.1g

Batter — Stage 3: add VERY SLOWLY, then mix 3 minutes on medium

Ingredient	8 qt	4 qt	2 qt	1 qt	¾ qt	½ qt
Hot Water	1893mL	946mL	473mL	237mL	177mL	118mL
Whole Milk	3785mL	1893mL	946mL	473mL	355mL	237mL

Frosting — Stage 1: mix slowly, then whip 3 minutes

Ingredient	Full	Half	Quarter
Butter	298g	149g	74.4g
Sweetex	454g	227g	113g
Confectioners’ Sugar (cane)	992g	496g	248g

Frosting — Stage 2: work in slowly, then mix on high

Ingredient	Full	Half	Quarter
Confectioners’ Sugar	907g	454g	227g
Sweetex	227g	113g	56.7g
Butter	227g	113g	56.7g

Frosting — Stage 3: add VERY slowly, then whip on high 15 minutes

Ingredient	Full	Half	Quarter
Whole Milk	177mL	89mL	44mL

Frosting variant — 50/50 butter & Sweetex

For a more dairy-forward frosting. As written the fat runs 43.5 / 56.5 butter to Sweetex; stage 2 is already even, so only stage 1 changes:

Stage 1	Full	Half	Quarter
Butter	376g	188g	93.9g
Sweetex	376g	188g	93.9g

Stages 2 and 3 are unchanged.

Butter is ~16% water, so hold back roughly 10% of the stage 3 milk and add the rest to feel.
Keep everything at cool room temperature. The extra butter makes the 15-minute whip more likely to go greasy rather than fluffy in a warm room.
Expect slightly less heat tolerance — butter softens around 30 °C where Sweetex stays plastic well above it. Fine for same-day service; less forgiving in a lit display case or on a warm day.
If it still reads as not quite real, push to 60/40 or 70/30 before doing anything else. 50/50 is only a ~6.5 point shift and is a deliberately conservative first step.

How to Make

Batter. Combine the sugar, cake flour, Sweetex, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and eggs in the mixer bowl. Mix 3 minutes on low speed.

Add the first portion of hot water very slowly, along with the salt. Once incorporated, mix 3 minutes on medium.

Add the second portion of hot water very slowly, along with the whole milk. Once incorporated, mix 3 minutes on medium.

Scale into greased and lined pans and bake at 180 °C (original: 360 °F ≈ 182 °C) until a toothpick comes out clean.

Frosting. Mix the butter, Sweetex and confectioners’ sugar together slowly, then whip 3 minutes. Slowly work in the second addition of confectioners’ sugar, Sweetex and butter, then mix on high. Add the milk very slowly. Whip on high for 15 minutes.

Makes

Quarter-sheet cakes, per the original card:

8 qt → 12 quarter sheets
4 qt → 6 quarter sheets
2 qt → 3 quarter sheets
1 qt → 1 half sheet
¾ qt → (not recorded)
½ qt → one 9” double-layer cake

Notes

This is a high-ratio cake. Sugar exceeds flour (133%) and total liquid is very high, which is why it depends on Sweetex — an emulsified high-ratio shortening. Ordinary shortening or butter will not carry this much sugar and liquid; the batter will break. Do not substitute.

Two separate hot-water additions — confirmed, not a transcription error. The hot water goes in twice, in two distinct “very slowly” stages, and the total is 2× the tabled amount (3785 mL for the 8 qt batch). The identical repeated line on the original card is correct as written. This is standard high-ratio method: liquid staged in rather than added at once.

	Column	Card as written	Used here
Batter Sweetex	¾ qt	7¼ oz → 206g	202g
Batter Sweetex	½ qt	5 oz → 142g	135g
Frosting sugar, stage 1	Quarter	9 oz → 255g	248g
Frosting milk	Half	⅓ cup → 79mL	89mL
Frosting milk	Quarter	⅕ cup → 47mL	44mL

Liquids are volume, not weight. Eggs, water and milk were specified in quarts on the original, so they are given in millilitres — an exact conversion. Converting them to grams would require assuming a density and would introduce error into a recipe that has none. If you want to weigh them: water 1 mL ≈ 1 g, whole milk ≈ 1.03 g/mL, whole egg ≈ 1.03 g/mL.
Rumford is a specific baking powder — aluminium-free, monocalcium phosphate, fast-acting. Paired here with an equal weight of baking soda against a heavy dose of natural cocoa. Substituting a slow-acting double-acting powder will change the crumb.
Cocoa is Dutch-process (alkalised) — Valrhona, as used in the bakery. It is not acidic, so the large soda addition is not there to neutralise the cocoa; it is reacting with the Rumford’s acid phosphate, and doing the dark-colour and tenderising work that heavy soda does in a devil’s-food style cake. Do not substitute a natural (non-alkalised) cocoa — it would throw the acid balance off against this much soda.

Baking this in Ireland

Cake flour — use oven-treated plain flour. US cake flour is chlorinated, and chlorination is banned across the EU, so there is no equivalent on sale here. Chlorination lowered protein, but the job that matters for this cake is that it raised the flour’s absorption capacity — which is what lets the batter carry sugar at 133% of flour and liquid at 174%. Cream plain flour is around 9.5% protein against cake flour’s 7.5–8%, so protein is very nearly a non-issue. Absorption is the whole gap.

Oven-treating closes most of it — it damages some starch so it takes up more liquid, and weakens the protein slightly as a side effect:

Spread the plain flour on a baking tray, roughly 2cm deep.
120 °C for 15–20 minutes, stirring every 5.
Cool completely, then sift — it clumps as it cools.
Weigh out the recipe amount after treating, not before. It loses moisture in the oven.

Any toasty note this leaves is invisible against 85g of Dutch-process cocoa, which makes it a low-risk step in this cake specifically.

Do not cut the flour with cornflour. That is the standard cake-flour substitution and it is wrong here. This batter is already short on structure: the cocoa contributes no gluten and the sugar suppresses what remains, putting effective protein near 7.6%. Diluting with pure starch drops it to roughly 6.6% and invites the cake to sink. Maize starch also gelatinises higher than wheat — about 62–72 °C against 52–64 °C — so on top of a sugar load that already raises the set point, the crumb sets later still, having risen further, with less protein holding it up.

A purpose-milled soft sponge flour beats plain flour if you can get one; finer particles hydrate faster, which helps the emulsion. Treat it the same way unless the bag says it is already heat-treated.

Eggs — buy Irish large. Do not switch to medium. The counts in the table follow the card’s 16-eggs-per-quart convention. That convention does not hold for a US large egg, which yields about 50mL cracked: sixteen of those make roughly 790mL, not the 946mL a quart needs. Whether the bakery’s eggs simply ran big, or “four eggs to a cup” was a rounded trade rule, the figure is generous against the eggs it names.

An Irish large egg (63–73g, roughly 56–65mL cracked) lands almost exactly on the ~59mL per egg the card assumes, so the counts come out right here — 32 Irish large ≈ 1920mL against a target of 1893mL, inside 1.5%.

By the grading standards a US large egg (56.7g and up) is an Irish medium (53–63g), and Irish large is nearer a US extra-large. That comparison is correct but misleading if acted on: the counts and the egg size are a matched pair, and swapping to medium to “match” the American original leaves you about 20% short on the one ingredient carrying the structure. If in doubt, ignore the counts and measure the millilitres — the volumes are the source of truth.

Test-bake before committing. Halve the ½ qt column for a single 8–9” layer: flour 170g, sugar 227g, Sweetex 67.5g, cocoa 42.5g, baking powder and soda 7.1g each, eggs 59mL, hot water 59mL twice, whole milk 118mL, salt 3.5g. If it domes and holds, run the full double layer. If it sinks in the middle the flour needs more structure, not less — cut in a little strong flour rather than reaching for cornflour.

Untested against this formula as of writing. If you bake it, record what happened here.

Buy

Sweetex — high-ratio emulsified shortening; standard bakery supply item, sold in 50 lb cubes. No true home-scale equivalent. No Irish retail source; UK bakery suppliers ship over.
Rumford Baking Powder — widely available; keep it separate from the general-purpose tin.

Appendix — Original card, as written

Preserved verbatim for reference. Weights are lb-oz; a leading dash means ounces only.

Chocolate Cake
Size                    8 qt    4 qt    2 qt    1 qt            1/2 qt
1/4 sht Cakes           12      6       3       1/2 sht         9"dbl layer
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mix for 3 minutes on low speed:
Gran. Sugar             16-0    8-0     4-0     2-0     1-8     1-0
Cake Flour              12-0    6-0     3-0     1-8     1-2      -12
Sweetex                  4-12   2-6     1-3      -9 1/2  -7 1/4  -5
Unsweetned Cocoa         3-0    1-8      -12     -6      -4 1/2  -3
Baking Pwdr (Rumsford)    -8     -4      -2      -1      -3/4    -1/2
Baking Soda               -8     -4      -2      -1      -3/4    -1/2
Eggs (quarts)             2      1       1/2     1/4     -3/16*  1/8
* 4 large eggs
VERY SLOWLY mix in (and then mix for 3 minutes on medium):
XX hot water (quarts)     2      1       1/2     1/4     3/16    1/8
Salt                      -4     -2      -1      -1/2    -3/8    -1/4
VERY SLOWLY mix in (and then mix for 3 minutes on medium):
XX hot water (quarts)     2      1       1/2     1/4     3/16    1/8
Whole Milk (quarts)       4      2       1       1/2     3/8     1/4
Bake at 360 until toothpick comes out clean.
FROSTING
Mix slowly, then whip for 3 minutes:
                                *
Butter                   -10.5   -5.25   -2.625
Sweetex                 1-0      -8      -4
Conf. Sugar (cane)      2-3     1-1.5    -9
Slowly work in (then mix on high):
Conf. Sugar             2-0     1-0      -8
Sweetex                  -8      -4      -2
Butter                   -8      -4      -2
VERY slowly add
Whole Milk (cups)       3/4     1/3      1/5
Then whip on high 15 minutes

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