Several years ago a friend gave me this kind of ridiculous cookbook that’s all recipes off the back of packages. The book’s 30 years old now, so some of the products the recipes are from don’t even exist anymore, and a fair number of the recipes are just weird. Because they’re all from the backs of packages, though, they tend to be short, and reasonably hard to mess up. Still, though, pate out of liver baby food? Barf. I guess because of how weird some of the other sections are, I never really checked out the dessert section of the book until recently, when I was surprised at how many things in there I really want to try!

The first dessert recipe I checked out was the Swiss Chocolate Squares. These are basically a thin layer of cake (Alex says brownie, I disagree – it’s not dense enough to be a brownie) with a good fudgey frosting on top. The frosting is really what sells it, it’s super delicious. Kyle and his sister think that these were better on the second day, once the frosting had really had time to soak/smoosh into the top of the cake, and I don’t disagree – the texture of the cake still hasn’t started to go off, several days later. This recipe was originally from a Parkay package, so it’s got margarine in it – didn’t even know Parkay still existed until I just looked it up.

Oh, almost forgot – the best part about this was that I was able to make it using one pot, one spatula, a jelly roll, and no other pans, bowls, whisks or mixers!

Ingredients:

For the cake:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 1/2 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup dairy sour cream (is there another kind?? I just used yogurt, since I had it…)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the frosting:

• 1/2 cup margarine
• 6 tablespoons milk
• 1 1/2 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
• 4 1/2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (I left this off. bleh.)

To make the cake: Combine water, margarine, and chocolate in saucepan; bring to boil. (I was originally concerned, since you generally heat chocolate over low heat, but I did this on medium and nothing burned.) Remove from heat.

Stir in flour and sugar.

Add the eggs, sour cream, baking soda, and salt and mix well.

Pour into a greased and floured 15 1/2 X 10 1/2″ jelly roll pan. I didn’t actually measure my pan, but it was the one of my two jelly roll pans that I trust not to collapse under weight… It was a close fit, but all the batter stayed in even as it rose in the oven.

Bake at 375 degrees 20-25 minutes. 20 did it for me.

While your cake is in the oven, scrape out anything left in your pot and…er, right, don’t lick the spatula, because you’re still cooking things you’re presumably sharing… You can get it reasonably clean enough, and the ingredients are similar enough, that I didn’t bother washing before starting the frosting.

Put the margarine, milk, and chocolate for the frosting in the pan. Once the cake’s out of the oven bring the mixture to a boil – for once you don’t want to wait for the cake to cool before starting on the frosting. Remove the boiling mixture from the heat and add the sugar, stirring until smooth. Stir in the vanilla.

Pour onto and smooth over the cake. If you want nuts, sprinkle them on now. Cool the cake and then cut into squares. You’ll probably want to do this over something (wax paper, newspaper, whatever), because it’s probably going to end up pouring over the edges.

After some counter cleaning...

Cool, and then cut into squares.

As I sort of mentioned, this keeps well, and is delicious!

Swiss Chocolate Squares

From the Favorite Brand Name Recipe Cookbook.

Cake:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1 1/2 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup dairy sour cream
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Frosting:

• 1/2 cup margarine
• 6 tablespoons milk
• 1 1/2 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate
• 4 1/2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour a jelly roll pan.

Combine water, margarine, and chocolate in saucepan; bring to boil Remove from heat. Stir in flour and sugar. Add eggs, sour cream, baking soda, and salt; mix well. Pour into jelly roll pan and bake 20 – 25 minutes.

Combine margarine, milk, and chocolate in saucepan; bring to boil. Remove from heat. Add sugar; beat until smooth. Stir in vanilla. Frost cake while warm; sprinkle with nuts. Cool; cut into squares.