Chocolate cake and a story

I love to cook. I''m comfortable following a recipe, or improvising. The running joke between me and mother is "where'd you get your love for cooking?" A family member asked me this straight-faced while my mom was RIGHT there. Awkward. The same person mused that I must have gotten it from a dead relative. Slam. I know where I got it, and so did that unnamed family member. I got it from my mom. She is the best home cook I know. I'm supposed to say that, because she's my mom, but even church people think so, too. Anything I make well, she makes better. When I got married, she wrote out many of my favorite recipes in a little journal. The journal is one of my favorite things. (Cue Julie Andrews.) The recipe I'm going to share is not from said journal, but it was a nice story to intro some of my cooking/baking adventures.

I'm not a baker. I love to cook, but baking stresses me out. Everything from the weather to the size of the measuring spoon has to be exact. I once read an article that showed the variation from one teaspoon to the next. Bah!  I want the perfect recipe, too, but I don't bake often enough to have the perfect recipe. I rely on All Recipes a lot for the user reviews, but even that has failed me sometimes. Not this time! I'm bringing chocolate cake to EVERYthing.

I found this recipe on AllRecipes, but after reading a few reviews, I discovered that it's the same recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box. Let's give credit where credit is due. My mom said her grandma used to make it. I didn't know this, but how 'bout a connection to the family matriarchs for the win!  (Enjoy the recipe.)

Basically, dump everything into a bowl, mix, pour into a prepared Bundt pan, and bake. I made THIS glaze to finish it off.

P.S.: I will get better at taking process pictures.