Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, cream together sugar and butter using an electric mixer.

Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Mix into egg mixture one cup at a time. With mixer running, slowly pour in evaporated milk, then vanilla and water. Mix until uniform. Using a serving spoon, spread three spoonsful of batter into 10 individual 9-inch lightly greased pans, using the back of the spoon to spread evenly. Bake 3 layers at a time on the middle rack of the oven at 350 degrees for 8 minutes. A layer is done when you hold it near your ear and you don’t hear it sizzle. (Start making the icing when the first layers go in the oven. Put the cake together as the layers are finished.)

To make the icing, pour sugar and evaporated milk into a medium pan. Cook over medium-low heat until warm, stirring constantly. Add chocolate and cook to melt. Once chocolate has melted, add butter. Cook over medium heat at a slow boil for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. When combined, add vanilla. Icing will be thin but will thicken as it cools. As each batch finishes baking, let layers cool for 3 minutes in the pans. Run a spatula around the edge of the pan and ease each layer out of the pan. Don’t worry if it tears; no one will notice when the cake is finished. Use 2-3 serving spoonsful of icing between each layer. Alternate cake and icing until all ten layers have been assembled. Cover the top and sides of the cake with the rest of the icing. Push icing that runs onto the plate back onto the cake. Allow cake to cool before serving.

Robbie Raffish shares what she learned:
A lot. Full disclosure, I had never baked one a layer cake before and I had a small anxiety attack before I started, but once I got the first layers in the oven and the icing started, I soon was building a slightly sloped but perfectly acceptable cake. One shopping tip: most unsweetened chocolate bars are four ounces — make sure to buy two. In terms of baking, my initial layers were too thick, so I only completed nine (9) instead of the traditional ten (10). By the third round of three pans, however, I had down the technique of thinning out the layers to slightly thicker than a crepe. In my oven the layers took longer to cook — the “sizzle” tip in the recipe is a good one. I should have cooked my icing at a more even temperature, though. I got some grittiness from where the sugar did not melt quite enough. All that said — no one volunteered to give back a slice!

Experience Level: Intermediate
Time Commitment: 1 hour or so
Ease of finding ingredients: 5 star
Cost: $$
Recipe directions: 5 star
Taste: 5 star

Recipes and photos from United We Eat: 50 Great American Dishes To Bring Us All Together by Capri Cafaro, Story Farm (July 4, 2020)