Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter & sugar; blend in eggs. Mix cocoa with hot water.
Sift dry ingredients together. Add flour mixture alternately with
cocoa mixture. Stir in vanilla.
Bake in greased pan, floured with cocoa, in 350 oven. 20 to 30
minutes for layers, about 40 minutes for sheet cake.
Notes and Variations
Note that one cup cocoa is not equal to an 8 oz. can.
The best icing we have found for this is a coffee creme icing.
This is basically a sugar icing with a great deal of instant coffee used
for the liquid. This needs to be formally redacted, next time we
make the cake.
But it works just fine with (white, vanilla) Buttercream
Frosting.
Sources
Originally from the Needham Times, passed on by Nancy Shapiro.