Hershey® Bar Cake, made from Hershey® bars and Hershey’s® Syrup has been a mainstay of my family since I received the recipe from a high school friend in El Dorado, Arkansas.  Since then, the sometimes finicky recipe has yielded a moist, dense, deep chocolate cake (well, most of the time) that has been the star of many after-dinner desserts and birthday celebrations for more than 50 or so years.

I say finicky because sometimes the cake bakes beautifully, sometimes it doesn’t.  It may be the weather.  It may be the oven.  It just may be me.  But if you can get this cake to turn out the way we like it — slightly undercooked yet not gooey, firm enough to cut with a fork — then you’ve got a treat that almost anyone will love.  At home, we serve it with good quality vanilla ice cream topped with rich, warm chocolate sauce.

The recipe is so old that it originally called for two 20-cent cans of syrup (not available now) and seven nickel candy bars!!! I’ve made some substitutions and included them in the full recipe below.

Basic steps: 

Cream butter & sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

Add 1 can Hershey Syrup.

Add flour mixture alternatively with buttermilk. Then add vanilla.

Add 5 melted Hershey bars.

Bake at 325 degrees for about 1 hour and 10-20 minutes.

Hershey® Bar Cake

2 sticks butter (1 cup)

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs, at room temperature

1 can Hershey® Syrup

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup buttermilk

5 Hershey® bars (1.55 ounces each)

Preheat oven to 350°.  Let 2 sticks of butter and eggs come to room temperature.  Grease and flour 10″ tube pan.

Cream butter and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.  Add syrup.  Sift dry ingredients.  Add to mixture alternatively with buttermilk.  Add vanilla. Melt Hershey© bars in microwavable measuring cup and add to mixture.

Bake at 325º for 1 hour and approximately 10 – 20 minutes more.  Test for doneness but do not let dry out completely.  You want this to be moist.  (I use a knife and look for it to come out with a little gooeyness clinging to it!)

For the bake sale at Holiday Helpings, we sold halves of the cake wrapped in plastic wrap and tied with burlap ribbon.  The tags were printed on cardstock and glued to scrapbooking paper.

Hope you enjoy making this cake.  Let us know if it works for you!  But even if it doesn’t, pull it out before it’s almost done and just eat it with a spoon.  Mmmm!

This post is #14 for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) 2013.