Sybil Pressly’s Buttermilk Cake with Old-Time Fudge Icing

During her years as innkeeper and executive chef of the historic Mast Farm Inn in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Sybil Pressly put her mother’s chocolate-frosted buttermilk layer cake on the menu and never took it off. Comforting and somehow familiar, even when you taste it for the first time, this cake belongs in your recipe box, whether it’s extensive or just a folder on the bookshelf. Mrs. Pressly uses these same yellow layers for her famous pineapple cream