Skip to main content

Indulgent Chocolate Cake

Hello friends,

A good rich, moist chocolate cake is up there in my top 3 of cake types, so here it is - my new favourite recipe. I made this for a birthday lunch, and wanted a little bit of wow, which is why I coated the cake in a white buttercream, and then poured a chocolate ganache over the top. I like how it turned out, although coating the cake was fairly time consuming and I kept getting crumbs in the icing so it wasn't perfect!




Ingredients:

200g plain flour
80g cocoa powder
200g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 duck eggs
100g vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
175g milk
75g warm water

180g soft butter
560g icing sugar
A dash of milk

100g milk chocolate
100g double cream

Method:

This makes an 18 inch sandwich cake. Preheat oven to 180C/ 160C fan assisted.

In a bowl mix together the flour, cocoa, caster sugar, baking powder and salt. Make sure this is well incorporated then add the wet ingredients, eggs, oil, vanilla and milk. Beat this until very consistent then add the warm water.

This will loosen up the mixture and keep beating until well mixed. Pour into two sandwich tins and bake for 25 - 30 minutes, when done allow to cool fully on a wire rack.

Whilst the cake is cooling, mix together the softened butter and icing sugar. I dislike icing sugar because it always coats my kitchen with the fine white dust, so if you put a tea towel over your bowl, this will help! Beat until the icing is light and fluffy and add the milk if the icing is a bit thick.

When the cake is cool, sandwich together with a little of the icing, then coat the cake. I found the best way of doing this was with a thin layer to start with, which will get mixed with crumbs, then go other with a second coat to make it neater.

If you want to add the ganache on top, melt the cream and chocolate together and then allow to cool, until it is just still at the pouring point. Slowly, pour onto the cake a little at a time allowing it to dribble down the sides. Add more until you have your desired effect. Put in the fridge to harden up the icing, then serve and watch people's faces as you cut into the cake and reveal the dark center! 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pasteils de nata - custard tarts

Pastry week on the Great British Bake Off saw Paull Hollywood set custard tarts as the technical challenge and I thought I would give them a go, seeing as I have never attempted them before! I own Paul's cookbook which has the recipe in, and it can also be found on the GBBO website. These two recipes vary slightly - in the book Paul doesn't make the rough puff pastry but uses shop bought (which I would normally do.) This being a Bake Off challenge though I decided to use the recipe they followed in the tent. The result - delicious buttery pastry filled with golden creamy custard. I ate 3 in one sitting! The tarts are quite fiddly and leaving the pastry to cool between rolling is essential to get the decent lamination and signature swirl on the bottom, so you will need to set aside a good couple of hours in total. As a side note, I found that I had a lot of left over custard - either I didn't make my tarts big enough or the recipe is rather generous with the por...

After Eight minis by Fantasy Cakes

Father Christmas clearly knows me well, as under the tree I had a new cake recipe book waiting; Fantasy Cakes by Angela Romeo and it is such a treat for the eyes to browse, and stomach for the wonderful cakes you could bake. It is a very clever book in that it has the standard cake recipes at the start which are used throughout the book. These so far have been so simple to throw together, which is very handy as I can leave the baby playing for 10 minutes to whip the cake up. You can order the book here , and I highly recommend it if you want to try some beautiful centre pieces or show stoppers. The first cake I tried is the After Eight minis, great as all the family were round to gobble up the end result.  This After Eight recipe took a while to assemble and create the individual elements however they can all be done in advance and individually rather than sitting down for a good couple of hours stretch. I had to alter the recipe slightly as I ran out of self raising fl...

Malteser Christmas Pudding Cake

Hello! Doing the rounds at this festive time is a Malteser Cake in the style of a Christmas pudding, and one of my friends has challenged me to make this, so being one to thrive at the thought of a challenge I gave it a go! I basically have made a chocolate cake in a Christmas pudding bowl, sliced and iced then covered in Maltesers. Pretty simple but looks fairly impressive.  This recipe will make you the Christmas pudding and some spare batter, so you can pop in 12 cupcakes as well! Ingredients: 350g plain flour 350g caster sugar 50g cocoa powder 1 tsp bicarb of soda 150g dark chocolate chips 435ml vegetable oil 1 cup of buttermilk (sour cream can be used as an alternative) 3 large eggs For the icing: 350g icing powder 250g softened butter Cocoa powder to flavour Two large share packs of Maltesers Melted white chocolate A couple of cherries Method: Preheat your oven to 170C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin and grease a Christmas Pudding shaped bowl. I ...