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

Watch this space.

Hey everyone/anyone,


I know I haven't written on here a lot this year (fail). Hopefully I'll remember to write on it more next term. I'm just writing to say there will be quite an epic update soon, with pictures of the cake I made for my Aunt and Uncle's wedding anniversary (along with a vast collection of Cake Pops - if you don't know what these are, GOOGLE THEM).


Other than that, hope you've all had a good summer!


MMFC

So it has been a while...

...That's not to say I haven't been baking lots. Plenty of flapjacks to keep me going during exams, a few birthday cakes and a few sets of cupcakes. Heres a selection of photos from my baking escapades since March...

Frosted Banana Cupcakes (very weird Yoghurt icing - tasty though)

This cake I made for a friend's birthday who unfortunately couldn't be there to have any (she was in Northern Ireland), so I had to eat it all myself... shame! A chocolate Giant Cupcake (tin courtesy of my brother) :D

Chocolate cake with leaf decoration and cream filling :D, made this one for another friend's birthday.

Chocolate orange cake (mk 1) with chocolate leaves decoration and white chocolate coating.

Chocolate orange cake (mk 2) with chocolate ribbon decoration and a white chocolate coating. Very chocolatey, went down a treat as a gift :).

I'll be sure to post some recipes sometime soon.. promise.

MMFC

Chocolate Toffee Cupcakes

As the name may suggest, these are very sweet and sickly. My favourite kind of cake!
They use a plain cake (though you could just as easily use chocolate flavour, or banana if you are feeling really adventurous) with a toffee sauce and them covered in melted chocolate. Mmmmmmm!!


Ingredients - makes 18 nicely

100g (4oz) butter or margarine

125g (5oz) sugar

150g (6oz) self raising flour

2 eggs

2 tbsp milk

½ tsp vanilla essence

Icing

1/2 can (200g) of sweetened condensed milk

50g (2oz) caster sugar

65g (2.5oz) butter

2 tbsp golden syrup

100g (4oz) plain chocolate

100g (4oz) milk chocolate

1. Preheat the oven to 190*C. Line 2 bun trays with paper cases. Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl, and add in the eggs. Beat until mixed.
2. Fold in the flour, milk and then vanilla essence. Divide into cases. Bake for 15 mins or until golden brown on top (and a skewer inserted comes out clean).
3. Cool on a wire rack. While cooking, start on the icing.
4. Put the condensed milk, sugar, butter and golden syrup in a medium heavy based pan and heat gently stirring until all the sugar is dissolved. Cook over a gentle heat for 5 mins or until a pale fudge colour.
5. Leave to cool until thick and spreadable. Then spread onto the tops of each cake.
6. Melt the chocolates (separately) in double boilers or in the microwave. Spoon the melted chocolate onto the tops of the cakes and make pretty patterns - i.e. swirl the two with a cocktail stick, or pipe one onto the other etc.
7. If you are like, decorate the tops with slivers (or curls if you can make them) of chocolate.

For chocolate cakes, add a bit of cocoa to the cake mix for chocolate (15 g (0.5 oz)), or for banana, remove 15 g (0.5 oz) of sugar and butter/margarine and replace with a mashed banana. Cook for roughly the same amount of time. Enjoy!


MMFC

Fruity Lunchbox Muffins

Number 2:


These are a bit like the raspberry muffins I wrote about a few posts ago, but are a bit less sweet. They keep for only a few days though, so don't make too many at once! I used frozen raspberries in mine, and Muller light yoghurt borrowed from my housemate - about 1 of the big pots is 150g. I also used 200g plain flour instead of wholemeal, as I have nothing else to use wholemeal flour on.

Ingredients - makes 12 normal size cakes or 6 muffins


100g (3.5 oz) plain flour
100g (3.5 oz) wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
75g (3 oz) caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp mild olive oil or veg oil
40g (1.5 oz) butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla extract
150g (5 oz) red fruit yoghurt
100g (3.5 oz) fresh raspberries or strawberries, cut into small pieces

1. Line a tray with cases. Preheat the oven to 200*C. Put the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl.
2. Whisk together the eggs, oil, melted butter, vanilla extract and yoghurt with a fork and add to the bowl.
3. Mix gently with a metal spoon until the ingredients have started to blend together. Scatter with half the berryy pieces and mix a little more until the ingredients are only just combined. Divide amongst the cases and scatter with the remaining berry pieces.
4. Bake for 15 mins or until well risen and just firm. Allow to cool. (A warm one is quite nice to eat though!)

Mine turned out a little paler, due to the lack of wholemeal flour, but tasted great. The sponge turns blue around the berries as the colour of the berries seeps out into the sponge. Overall a very nice not-so-sweet cake for a lunchbox.

MMFC

Mile High Marshmallow Cupcakes

Its been a long time since my last post - apologies! I've been rather busy in labs and such (though as anyone will tell you, I still haven't done any work). So to make up for it, I'll (barring any disasters) put up 3 posts this weekend :D.


Firstly, these are some Marshmallow cakes. They have lots of marshmallows in (duh) that caramelise in the oven. mmmmm. Plus a huge amount of icing - make these a nice little treat.

Ingredients - makes 12 normal size cakes or 6 muffins


50g (2 oz) Marshmallows
125g (4 oz) butter
100g (3.5 oz) caster sugar
2 eggs
150g (5 oz) self-raising flour
0.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract


Icing


75g (3 oz) Marshmallows, plus extra chopped for decoration
300ml (0.5 pt) double cream

1. Line a 12 hole tin, preheat the oven to 180*C and cut the marshmallows into small pieces. Either: Put all the other cake ingredients in a mixer and mix until light and creamy, then skip to part 4 or
2. Cream the butter and sugar. Blend the eggs and vanilla essence in.
3. Slowly add the flour and baking powder, mixing constantly until thoroughly mixed.
4. Stir in the marshmallow pieces and divide the mixture amongst the cases.
5. Bake for 20 minutes or until risen and just firm.
6. Icing - Cut the marshmallows into small pieces and put about a third in a small saucepan with half the cream. Heat very gently until melted. Tip into a bowl and leave to cool.
7. Whip the remaining cream until it forms soft peaks. Stir in the marshmallow cream and remaining marshmallows pieces, then pile onto the cakes. Scatter with extra chopped marshmallow pieces.

(This one looks strangely yellow - I think it was the lighting of the room)

The icing may be better if you use more (0.5 or 2/3) of the marshmallows in the melting stage, and then use the rest to scatter, omitting stirring any pieces in. This should make the icing very easy to pipe and so make more fancy looking cakes :D

MMFC