Chocolate Cake

A classic Tyrian dessert, almost universally beloved and quite easy to put together too! There is, of course, more than one way to make a chocolate cake and everyone seems to have their own favourite recipe. I quite like this one for its simplicity. It's not quite as rich as some versions, but it still has plenty of chocolate-y goodness baked in.


Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

  • 175g unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 1/2 c. sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1/2 c. cocoa
  • 225g soft (plain/standard/cake) flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground (optional)
  • 1 c. milk
  • 1 recipe Chocolate Frosting

Directions

  1. Grease and flour a 23cm1 (9") round cake tin and preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
  2. Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Don't skimp on this step! Really give it what-for and work a lot of air into the butter, it'll have a dramatic effect on the finished texture of your cake.
  3. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat well after each addition.
  4. In a separate bowl, sift the cocoa with the flour, baking powder, and salt (if using).
  5. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk, starting and ending with dry ingredients.
  6. Do not over-mix, but do give mixture one final stir to make sure there are no lingering lumps of dry ingredients remaining in the batter.
  7. Pour batter into prepared tin.
  8. Drop the tin on the counter a few times to knock out any large air bubbles.
  9. Spread the batter into an almost even layer in the tin. Make it slightly concave so that it's a bit lower in the centre and higher around the sides.
  10. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 45-55 minutes.
  11. Remove from oven and let cool in tin for 10 minutes.
  12. After 10 minutes, turn out onto wire rack and cool completely.
  13. Use a thread to split the layers if necessary.
  14. Once the cake has cooled completely -- don't get impatient here! -- ice it with chocolate frosting.



1 If you would like your cake to be tall enough to split into three layers, try baking it in a 20cm (8") round tin. You may need to slightly reduce the baking temperature and increase the baking time if you do this. Alternatively, you could bake it in two or three separate tins if you don't fancy splitting layers. Back

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