Friday 16 August 2013

Delicious Chocolate Birthday Cake

So recently I decided to take on the challenge of making a birthday cake for my sister's 20th. We normally buy shop bought cakes for birthday's so the goal was to make a cake that would be better than a bought one in both taste and looks. I decided to take a bit of a risk and try a recipe for a cake sponge that I hadn't used before. Luckily it turned out to be a great recipe and the chocolate cake was delicious, really moist but firm enough to cover with fondant icing.

To make this cake you will need: 
350g sugar (caster)
85g cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
225g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs
250 ml milk
125 ml vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
250ml boiling water

You will also need two 20cm sandwich tins (or you could make just one cake and halve the ingredients)

Prepare to make your cake by lining the sandwich tins with grease proof paper and preheating the oven to 180°c or gas mark 4. The actual cake is super easy to make. Start by mixing all the ingredients, except the boiling water, together. Make sure all the ingredients are well incorporated, it should look like this: 



Then mix in the boiling water little by little. The mixture should then become quite liquid. Divide it between the two sandwich tins and bake for between 25 to 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. 


Turn the cakes out onto a cooling wire and wait until they are completely cool before attempting any decoration. From here there are so many decorating options (this cake is so wonderfully versatile!). I put chocolate butter cream between the layers of cake and then covered the cake with fondant icing and decorated the fondant. I will show you how to cover a cake with fondant and paint on roses in my next couple of posts. You could also cover the cake with butter cream or ganache or just fill the middle and leave the rest of the cake plain. I am always keen for new ideas so if you try this cake post some pictures of how you decorated it. 




Happy baking xxx

No comments:

Post a Comment