Chocolate Cakes, Southern Style

Southerners don’t think of chocolate as particularly Southern; they just love having it as an option when creating divine sweets and desserts. Cocoa is most common in the modern Southern kitchen, but unsweetened and bittersweet chocolate played a bigger role in the Southern kitchens of the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. Older recipes often call for chocolate to be grated, and measurements are given in weights, as were all ingredients for baking at the time.