I found a handwritten recipe tucked into one of my vintage cookbooks. It was written on a paper torn from a promotional pad, so I was able to guess a rough date based on information on the paper. It’s probably early 1940s, which makes sense because the cookbook was published in 1940. Of all of the vintage recipes I make, these handwritten ones are my favorites. They are so personal somehow. It’s very different than reading a recipe out of a published cookbook.
Magic Chocolate Frosting
- 2 squares unsweetened chocolate
- 1/4 tsp vanilla
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 tbsp water
Melt chocolate in double boiler. Add sweetened condensed milk and stir over boiling water 5 minutes until it thickens. Ad water and vanilla. Spread and serve when cool.
Results
I was disappointed with this frosting. Whenever I make something from a handwritten recipe that I’ve found, I think that somehow I’ll end up with something amazing and spectacular. After all, someone liked this recipe so much that they took the time to copy it down and tuck it into the pages of a cookbook to save. Plus, with a name like “Magic Chocolate Frosting,” it had to be magical, right?
Not one of my taste testers liked the frosting. It was somehow runny and thick at the same time. The consistency was more like an oily syrup. One of my sons said it felt like he was eating slime. The cupcakes soaked up the frosting so quickly that by the time we called everyone to the kitchen, it looked like we had poured chocolate water over them instead of frosting. The frosting did have a nice, not overly sweet chocolate flavor, but that’s about all I can say in favor of it. Well, and it was shiny and reflected light like a mirror. It was actually quite lovely to look at after it was freshly applied to the cupcake.
I don’t recommend this recipe, but I’m glad we tried it. I like to think that the woman who slipped this into the pages of my book would be happy that, almost 80 years later, someone else was reading and making the recipe she wrote down. I just wish we would have liked it a little better.
Do you have a favorite chocolate frosting recipe?
History in the Kitchen 
Sugar was rationed during WWII so this must of been a way to dress up a plain single layer cake. Poke some holes in the top of the layer and pour it on, then let it sit before removing it from the pan.
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I agree that this recipe was a sugar rationing recipe. I tried a cupcake after it had soaked in, almost like a poke cake, and it made the cake mushy and almost oily. Fortunately, I have some sugar substitute frosting recipes that taste better. I’ll have to make one soon and feature it here.
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