A Chocolatey Fudgey Cakey

Chocolate Fudge Cake  (Miss M. Webber)
pg59

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 4 tab cocoa powder
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 3 cup S.R Flour

Prepare a cake tin and preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.  
Beat butter and sugar, add eggs, beating well all the time.  Add combined milk and essence, beating with electric mixer.  Sift in combined cocoa and flour.   Add boiling water and mix through well before transferring to the cake tin. 
Bake in the moderate oven for 45 min or until done. 

Serving suggestions:  serve topped with a chocolate buttercream icing or a chocolate ganache icing.  

I enjoyed this cake, though I know at least one person who tried it said it was a little too dry.   I will also put it out there that though it was a very nice chocolate cake, I wouldn't describe it as a 'chocolate fudge cake'.  Fudge indicates some extra level of chocolatey goodness to me that wasn't present in this recipe.  

However, that said, I  will owe that the recipe was reliable and was sufficient to make not one, but two large sized cakes.  

About Mrs M Webber

Looking for information on Miss M. Webber wasn't as easy as I first thought.  There's plenty a mention of Webber girls in the Brisbane newspapers from the 1930s through to the 1940s.  There's a Miss J. Webber, a Miss E. Webber and a Miss M. Webber.   

The point at where it gets murky is that in 1932 there are two mentions of a Miss. M. Webber.  One is a golfing tournament at Victoria Park Golf Course.  The other is a social article about the Pre-Marriage party of a Miss M. Webber and a Mr E. O'Hara. 

So - if this 1932 Miss M. Webber was OUR Miss M. Webber, how could she still be listed as a 'Miss' in the cookbook which was printed in 1941?  But then, why is our golfing Webber still listed as a 'Miss' in September after a pre-marriage party in June the same year?

There is another mention of a Miss M. Webber in 1947 - a wedding/honeymoon notice in which a Miss. M Webber was bridesmaid to Miss Joyce E. Sellars.

Though I like to imagine a great big to-do in which Miss M. Webber was engaged to O'Hara, broke it off and lived a fabulous life of a single girl, playing golf, attending dances and then being a bridesmaid over a decade later,  I know that is a little more than far-fetched.  It is far more likely that the Miss M. Webber we are looking for is the 1947 Miss M. Webber, who played bridesmaid for her friend in Clayfield.