Chocolate Cake

This is my favourite chocolate cake recipe. I've used it millions of times, and it makes a beautiful cake. Very chocolatey, very nice!


Chocolate Cake - one 8" cake roughly 2" deep

125g (4oz) semisweet or milk choc

3 tbsp milk

80g (3oz) marg

200g (7oz) sugar

3 eggs

200g (7oz) SR

1 tbsp cocoa

Icing - buttercream

3oz marg

6oz icing

1 tbsp cocoa

Icing - ganache

1 ½oz butter (must be butter)

1oz cocoa

4oz icing sugar

2 tbsp milk

  

1. Melt choc and milk in heatproof bowl.
2. Add to everything else in processor.
3. Process.
4. Bake at 180 °C for 35-40 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Best to rotate it in the oven halfway through.
5. Cool on a wire rack in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out of the tin.
6. Cut cake in half when cold. 

If not using a processor, blend butter and sugar, then blend in eggs one by one. Fold in the flour and cocoa powder, and then add the melted chocolate. For best results, use processor.

Icing methods:

Buttercream – just blend everything together in a bowl until smooth

Ganache icing - melt butter in a pan, add milk and heat gently until smooth mixture formed, then sift in icing sugar and cocoa powder. Stir until smooth and glossy. Should be liquid enough to pour and spread on cake.

You should ice the middle of the cake with buttercream, saving about 1/3 or 1/2 to coat the outsides with. Put the top on the cake, and then coat the top and sides with buttercream. Leave to set. 

Now is a good time to make the ganache icing. Let it cool a little before actually pouring it onto the cake, as otherwise it will melt the buttercream and make a horrible mess. Spread the ganache icing all over the cake, being careful to not spread too deep and hit the buttercream. Once it completely covers the cake, get a wet pallette knife and smooth the ganache out to make a nice sheen.

The cake can then be decorated in a variety of ways - chocolate buttercream piped onto it, chocolate leaves put on top, leave it blank, or anything else you like!

Hope you enjoy this cake as much as I do. I've used it to make a Harp shaped cake, a radio shaped cake, and a number of other birthday cakes.

MMFC

Anniversaries galore...

So as previously mentioned, it was my Aunt and Uncle's 20th Wedding anniversary this summer, for which I made a quite epic cake. Here are some photos of the cake:

This had a fruit cake base (using this recipe: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2988/hot-toddy-fruitcake but used sweet sherry instead of whiskey - Thanks for the recipe Hannah!) covered in marzipan, and then ready-roll-icing, stuck together with home-made jam. Then I put a chocolate cake on top (my favourite choc cake recipe - to follow), iced with chocolate buttercream and then coated in ready-roll-icing. It was all stitched together with some piped royal icing.


THEN the big one - the cake pops. These use a basic 2 egg chocolate cake recipe (4oz SR flour/4oz Marg/4oz Sugar + 2 eggs + cocoa powder) mixed with 2.5oz Cream Cheese and 5oz of icing sugar. The cake is crumbed in a food processor, and then has the cream cheese/icing sugar mixed into it to make a moist "dough". This is then put onto a lollipop stick, coated in chocolate/cake covering and decorated. The result:

Combined with the cake....

Next up, it was my parent's anniversary today - and this week I've been preparing a cake for them. The same chocolate cake as my favourite one above, coated with chocolate buttercream, and then a chocolate ganache. I then covered the whole cake in chocolate leaves :D

Finally, for LINKS' teambuilding at the start of the summer, I made a cake for my friend Lorna for her 21st birthday. She is fascinated/obsessed by elephants, so that was an obvious choice of cake design. I gave her the tin afterwards, cos we bought a special shaped Elephant tin. I used the basic chocolate cake recipe from above (using cocoa powder), but just increased the size a bit to fit the tin.

That is all my photos for the summer - I shall follow up with the chocolate cake recipe.


MMFC