Hershey's Milk Chocolate Cake

This cake is a favorite of my mother's. Wonderfully light & moist with lots of milk chocolate flavor. It was given to her by a friend out of a (maybe) church recipe book. It was copyrighted in 1955, and the original recipe calls for "8 plain Hershey bars (5-cent size)", so we have to now guess at the amount of chocolate. A standard size Hershey bar (43 grams per bar) works great. It is cheaper to buy Hershey bars in 1/2 lb. or more blocks (I found these at Wal-Mart)(You need a total of 344 g).

• Ready In: 1 hr 55 mins
• Serves: 12-16
• Yields: 1 tube pan cake

Ingredients

• 8 (43 g)  hershey  milk chocolate candy bars
• 1  cup butter (softened)
• 2  cups sugar
• 4  eggs
• 2  teaspoons vanilla
• 2 1⁄2 cups flour
• 1  teaspoon baking powder
• 1⁄4 teaspoon salt
• 1  cup buttermilk
• 1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3⁄4-1  cup pecans (chopped)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300°F Grease 10" tube pan or 2 loaf pans.
2. Melt chocolate at 50% power for 2 minutes in microwave, then stir every 30 seconds (at 50% power) until melted.
3. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each egg.
5. Beat in melted chocolate and vanilla.
6. In small bowl, sift together the flower, baking powder, & salt.
7. In separate small bowl, stir buttermilk and baking soda together.
8. Add flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately in thirds; avoid overmixing.
9. When batter is smooth, add pecans.
10. Bake until toothpick comes out clean, aobut 1 hour 45 mins for tube pan, about 1 hour 10 minutes for loaf pans.
11. Cool 10 minutes on rack in pan, then turn out cake to rack and cool completely.
12. Needs no frosting!