This 90-Year-Old Chocolate Frosting Is the Only One I'll Ever Make

I’ve tried many chocolate icings and frostings in my years of baking cakes and cupcakes, but nothing has ever topped the recipe I grew up eating. It's the chocolate icing my mom still makes every year for decorating her birthday cake—one year, she’ll let me make it for her, right mom? It's also the one to which I compare all the others.

Of course, I would gladly enjoy a chocolate ganache or an easy frosting that employs chocolate chips, an ingredient I always have on hand. However, what I call “my mom’s chocolate icing” will always be my gold standard. I love it not just for its taste but also for how foolproof it is to make and how it doesn’t require any fancy ingredients. 

This gold standard comes from a 1934 Hershey’s cookbook, where the recipe is called Busy Day Cocoa Icing. Take a look at the image below. I cannot count the times I’ve referenced this faded page, covered with chocolate splatters, watermarks, and my mom’s almost illegible cursive note reading “Delicious. Like fudge square icing.” (She’s referencing my grandmother’s family-famous recipe.)

While I’ve tried many alternatives over the years, I'm using this recipe if I’m making chocolate icing.

The Busy Day Cocoa Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons boiling water
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick or 4 tablespoons) butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 cup Hershey’s Cocoa
• 3 cups powdered sugar

The steps couldn’t be simpler. Pour the boiling water over the butter, and immediately add the vanilla and cocoa. Beat until well blended. Then, add the powdered sugar. Beat until creamy, adding more water if necessary, until the icing is thin enough to spread.

Spread on a warm cake (more on that later). The recipe is perfect for a generously frosted 8 or 9-inch round cake or a 9x-13-inch sheet cake.

Why I Love This Recipe

It's sweet, but not too sweet: This icing has full chocolate flavor that is perfectly satisfying and not so rich that it sends me searching for a glass of milk. It’s deliciously sweet but doesn’t fall over the edge into cloying territory.

It's easy to spread: With a little less water and a little more powdered sugar, it can turn thick and spreadable. But I like it just as the recipe describes, which leaves it thin enough to pour and dense enough that it still responds to a spoon or offset spatula.  I’m no artist when decorating cakes, so I appreciate how smoothly the icing glides on. When it pools a little at the edges of the cake, I clean it off if I’ve made a round layer cake, or let it sit for the lucky person who gets a corner slice if I’m making a sheet cake. 

No need to bring butter to room temperature: I also really appreciate the freedom from having to bring butter to room temperature because the boiling water softens it right up. Who has time to let the butter come to room temperature? Busy day icing for the win! 

It's the perfect texture: I love how fudgy and irresistible the icing is right out of the bowl, but I also love how a thin sheen forms when it has hardened. It doesn’t quite create an audible crunch when you bite into it, but the stiffness gives your teeth something to sink into and hold onto.

Tips for Making This Recipe Shine

• Stick with Hershey’s: You can use other cocoa powders, but to me, Hershey’s taste is rich and creamy, not at all bitter, and has that nostalgia factor that’s hard to compete with.
• Spread hot or cold: The recipe calls for spreading the icing on a warm cake, encouraging it to seep into the cake for a very moist crumb. That’s a great option. I also like to wait until the cake has cooled so that the icing remains a little thicker without the heating effect of the cake, which lets me spread the icing more evenly—more like frosting.
• Avoid a cloud of powdered sugar: When adding the powdered sugar, turn the mixer down a speed or two and place a clean kitchen towel over it to prevent a powder puff.
• Lick the spoon: Reserve some extra icing to enjoy on the spot. Maybe reserve a lot.