Chocolate Cake (Feathery Fudge)

The latest buzz around Reddit's neck of the woods is this vintage "feathery fudge cake" with a chocolate satin frosting. For several months now, Nana's Devil's food cake has been all the rage on the "Old Recipes" subreddit, but there's a new chocolate cake in town, and it's this stunner from the 1950's Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. The thing that really caught my eye when I read the recipe is that it listed 1 ¼ cups of ice water as an ingredient. Water? In a cake? Instead of milk? My own curiosity got the best of me, and I knew I had to give it a whirl. Here's how it went.

Cake:
2/3 cup soft butter
1¾ cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2½ (1 oz) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
2½ cups sifted cake flour
1¼ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. sea salt
1¼ cups ice water

Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C/155°C fan, Gas Mark 3). Line 2 (9x1½") round pans.

Cream together butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla till fluffy (beat 5 minutes at high speed on mixer, scraping bowl occasionally to guide batter into beaters, or 5 minutes by hand). Blend in chocolate.

Sift flour with soda, and salt; add to creamed mixture alternatively with ice water; beat after each addition.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or till done. Frost cooled cake with Chocolate Satin Frosting.

Cook's Notes:

• The cakes cooked a lot quicker for me, I set my timer at 25 minutes to check them and they were done at that time, so when I make this again I will check them sooner than 25 minutes.
• I did not use the chocolate satin frosting as it used raw eggs and I did not feel comfortable doing so. I just used a quick chocolate buttercream recipe I found online (I did not have powdered sugar either so I made some using granulated sugar and cornstarch. This gave the icing more of a crunch but it was still very good).