Chocolate Sheet Cake

John's favorite cake.

Chocolate Sheet Cake

2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 sticks butter (or I suppose you could use margarine)
4 Tbsp cocoa
1 cup water
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Sift sugar, flour, and baking soda. In saucepan, melt butter, cocoa, and water over low heat; bring to a boil. Add dry ingredients. Add buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Pour into greased and floured jellyroll pan. Bake 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees.

Icing:
1 stick butter
4 Tbsp cocoa
6 Tbsp buttermilk
1 box powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Bring butter, cocoa, and buttermilk to a rapid boil (in saucepan). Add powdered sugar, vanilla, and nuts. Mix well and spread on cake while warm.

Rolo Pretzels

I'm not a big fan of chocolate, but these pretzels were a hit at Christmas. I just made a batch for Bunco tomorrow night.

Rolo Pretzels

mini pretzels

bag of Rolo candy

pecan halves

Preheat oven to 350. Unwrap Rolos. Bake pretzels for about 5 minutes. Pull out of the oven and place a Rolo atop each pretzel. (There were 56 Rolos in the bag I bought...so I baked 56 pretzels). Put pretzels/Rolos back in oven for a few minutes. Watch carefully. The chocolate should be soft, but not completely melted. Take out when soft and smash a pecan half into Rolo. Let cool and store in airtight container.