Most Awesome Chocolate Cake In The World!!1!!11!

No word of a lie.

My aunt and uncle are visiting from N. Ireland this weekend, and we're going over for Sunday lunch. I said I would bring pudding in one form or another, and as my mum's doing a full-on roast beef dinner, I thought cake would be a good option. Because cake is always a good option, let's face it.

So here is my recipe for the best chocolate cake everrrrrrrr, a bit annoying and faffy to make in places but always always light, fluffy and yummy. I thought I'd better write it down somewhere as I keep losing the bit of paper it's currently written on. Here we go:

Ingredients

75g cocoa
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 medium eggs
370g light muscovado sugar
180ml groundnut oil
200g sifted SR flour

Note: I don't get too stressed out about the ingredients and neither does the cake. For example, I only ever have large eggs in the house, so they go in. I usually use light soft brown sugar, or whatever I can find, I've even used caster sugar before. I never have groundnut oil in the house, so I use any other kind of vegetable or sunflower oil. Obviously if you have everything in, that's spot on. Also, if you use the best quality cocoa and chocolate you can find, the cake will taste great. If you use Extra Value chocolate flavoured cake topping, that's what it's going to taste like.

1. Whisk the cocoa into 200ml boiling water, then whisk in the bicarbonate of soda. Leave it to cool for about 20 minutes. 



Don't accidentally lick the fork - not nice!

2. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4. Butter or oil two 20cm loose-bottomed cake tins and line them with baking paper.*

3. Whisk together the eggs, sugar and oil in a bowl until smooth, then stir in the flour and then the cocoa solution. Divide the mixture between the two cake tins and give each tin a sharp tap on the work surface to bring up any air bubbles. 

4. Bake the cakes for 30-40 minutes, until they are well-risen and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave the cakes to cool.

5. When the cakes are cold, remove them from the tins and peel off the baking paper. If they have gone a bit dome-shaped, you might like to slice the top off one of them, and turn it over so it sits on the cut side. This minimises wobble. Of course, it's up to you what you do with the extra bit of cake...
6. If you like, you can stick some filling between the two cakes - suggestions are whipped cream, buttercream, black cherry jam, even warmed Nutella works quite well! Or any combination of the above. However, if you want to go for the full whammy, read on...

Chocolate truffle filling

Ingredients

125g milk chocolate, broken up into pieces.
20g butter
30g sifted cocoa powder
60ml milk
1 tbsp runny honey (or golden syrup/maple syrup/anything golden and sticky!)

1. Gently melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over a pan containing a little simmering water, stirring until smooth. If you're feeling brave, you can do it in the microwave on a very low heat, checking regularly. If it seizes up and goes greasy, you're going to have to start again.
2. At the same time, stir together the cocoa, milk and honey in a small saucepan and heat it up until it's almost boiling, stirring it well. Push it through a sieve into the bowl with the melted chocolate, and give it all a good stir until you get a thick, glossy icing. 
3. Using a serrated knife (the finer the better), slice both cakes in half across-wise, giving you four thin layers of cake.
   
   

   

   Nice messy working surface - oh well!

   
   I tend to sandwich the halves together with the chocolate icing, and then sandwich the two cakes together with whipped cream, because I find three lots of chocolate icing is a bit rich and sort of sticks to the roof of your mouth a bit. However, I think three smaller amounts of chocolate filling, topped with a thin layer of whipped cream on each might work well, or as above, buttercream/cherry jam/fruit/whatever. You can also double up on the icing and put some on the top of the cake too, but it tends to go a bit dribbly down the sides before it sets and I'm not really into that.



Chocolate filling on - just about to add whipped cream

This is going to make you a nice, tall cake, depending on how much filling you like between the cake layers. It looks quite impressive and is also delicious.

Ta-Daaaahh!

You're going to be consuming about a gazillion calories per slice, but hey, enjoy it while it lasts. You could get run over by a bus tomorrow. Liz Hurley once said "I'd rather have a small bottom than a piece of cake" and look what happened to her. Anyway, for me, a piece of cake is achievable, whereas a small bottom... never gonna happen.

Anyway - enjoy. Edited to add pictures.


* If you're going to bake regularly, it's worth investing in decent cake tins, and the loose-bottomed variety make it easier to get the cakes out. Also, I know lining the tins is a royal pain but it really does make all the difference, both for baking evenly and removing the cakes.