This recipe has been made by mom as far back as I can remember. We used to follow the handwritten recipe from an index card until the paper yellowed from use and abuse in the kitchen. When I was in college, we also sold a few of these during the holidays for friends requesting the cake.
The mystery with this recipe is that it ALWAYS gets lost (even in my emails!) and I would be asking my mom for the recipe EVERY TIME!
I tried searching online, but all I get are these musings from Filipinos yearning for the particular cake but not the recipe. It seems like people are holding on to the recipe as a trade secret. I see several bakeries and cafes serving this but I have yet to stumble upon this exact recipe online.
Since 2012 was almost done and I still have tons of tablea left in my pantry, I struggled to find recipes for me to use my tablea stash. I had made tablea chocolate crinkles during christmas and suman with tsokolate some days, and I still had my stash. And just in time, my supermom sent me the recipe. Maybe this will be the last time I will be asking her for the recipe, too, unless this blog vanishes into the cyberspace.
My Daniel Tiger’s Neigborhood addicted son wanted to make a “Love Cake” with his name on it, and since he was sick few hours before the New Year starts, I had to make this for him.
I was not able to make the frosting, so I just grabbed my bag of chocolate morsels, zapped them in the microwave and slapped them all around the cake, and.. viola! chocolate cake!
COOKIE MONSTER MOIST CHOCOLATE CAKE
This recipe requires you to make 3 different mixtures — the batter, dry ingredients and wet ingredients. Place these in separate containers and we shall be combining them all in the batter.
Pre-heat oven to 350 deg F and start making the cake
BATTER
1 block (or 2 sticks) butter (225 grams or 8 oz)
2 ½ C sugar
3 whole eggs
- Cream the butter with a mixer and gradually add sugar. Add whole egg to the butter-sugar mixture one at a time, set aside
DRY INGREDIENTS
Measure, strain and mix:
2 ½ cups all purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
¾ Cocoa or powdered tablea
WET INGREDIENTS
Mix together the wet ingredients in one container
1 cup evaporated milk
2 cups water
1 tsp vanilla flavoring (add more, or less, according to preference)
- Fold in the dry ingredients to the creamed butter, alternating with the liquid mixture. Make sure you start and end with the dry ingredient mixture. (See below for a link on how to fold ingredients for baking)
- Pour in your baking pan of choice and bake in oven until toothpick inserted comes out clean (from 35mins-1hour, depending on the size of your cake pan)
PHASE 2
once cooled, cut the cake lengthwise and spread natilla filling
NATILLA FILLING
1 big can condensed milk
3 eggyolk
3 tbsp flour
- Mix ingredients together and cook in slow fire, with constant stirring, until spreading consistency is achieved.
CHOCOLATE FROSTING
¾ C sugar
½ C cocoa
¼ C flour
1 C evap milk
butter
- Mix ingredients together and cook in slow fire, with constant stirring, until spreading consistency is achieved, before taking out from flame add 1 Tbsp butter
TABLEA POWDER
Tablea, contrary to how it looks is actually a soft chocolate tablet. You may divide the tablet into pieces by using your bare hands. Then, place it on your trusty coffee grinder, and grind until you get the fine tablea powder. An alternative might be to pound it with a mortar and pestle, I haven’t tried this approach yet but it might work.
Click here for HOW TO FOLD INGREDIENTS:
it very helpful info
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thanks for sharing!.. I’ve also been looking for the Natilla recipe..I’ll try this one..:)
I’m just curious about the amount of the liquid over the amount of the flour. Isn’t it too watery?
Those are the correct measurements. It is not a very thick batter when you put it in the oven, then it eventually comes together into a moist, firm cake after baking 🙂
Hello! My husband and daughter baked their first cupcakes using your family recipe. 🙂 We loved it! So moist and fluffy! Since my husband is a chocoholic, he thought he’d try another batch using double the amount of tablea. 🙂
http://adoboart.com/2015/05/24/tablea-chocolate-cake/
You’re welcome! Tableas are the purest chocolate you can get. Those cupcakes are are good idea too!
Hi. I want to try your recipe. I’ve been looking for one which uses tablea since we have lots in the pantry. Did you also blog about your crinkles recipe using tablea? Can you please post it?
I wasn’t able to write the recipe for the tablea just yet 😀
Thanks for sharing this recipe. My Lola died without passing on her recipes. I miss her cooking so much. Keeping the recipe in cyberspace is a wonderful idea. Congratulations on your blog.
Thank you, and I hope you can keep her memory alive in your future cooking adventures 🙂