Hungry Bear and I love good old-fashioned chocolate cake. Nothing beats a moist, tender and airy piece of chocolate cake for dessert. The hard part is finding a recipe that has the right cake texture, chocolate flavor and sweetness level.

Last week, we were watching an episode of the Barefoot Contessa in which Ina Garten made a great looking chocolate cake. It looked so good, I had to give it a try. Hungry Bear's birthday was in a few days, so I decided to make it for her birthday.

The chocolate cake recipe produced a super moist cake due to all the liquids in the batter — 1 cup buttermilk, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 cup hot coffee. With all the liquids, the batter was the runniest cake batter I've ever made. The frosting was a simple chocolate buttercream. Since we like intense chocolate flavors, I substituted bittersweet chocolate for the semisweet called for in the recipe and added an extra ounce of chocolate. And of course, I used Scharffen Berger chocolate and cocoa powder.