Chocolate Cake

This is one of my favourites that I mentioned on the home page of my blog and it comes early on, just the second baking recipe to go on my blog. This is a delicious dessert that lots of people like and you can simply replace 1/5 of the flour in a normal Victoria sponge cake and replace it with cocoa powder. However, in my blog, I am doing it the proper way and I will be making the authentic chocolate cake, not just some Victoria sponge with cocoa.

What You Need

200g self raising flour

225g caster sugar

30g cocoa powder

100g margarine

2 eggs

5 tablespoon evaporated milk

5 tablespoon water

1l water

Chocolate icing

These ingredients are enough to make one cake

How You Make It

First, heat the oven up to 180ᴼ Celsius, and 170ᴼ Celsius for fan assisted ovens. Next grease and line 2 cake tins, but do not use loose bottomed tins as the mixture is so runny, it would just run out.

Now in a mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together thoroughly and then rub in the margarine. In a separate bowl, or you could use a mixing jug, beat the eggs and add the milk and 5 tablespoons of water. To finish the mixture, make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly for at least 3 minutes. Now, pour the mixture into the prepared tins and bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.

Once the cakes are done, take them out of the oven and leave to cool,

if you have a cooling rack, put them on that as it will allow them to cool from the bottom, and therefore will be more efficient. Once the cakes are completely cool, you could leave them there and eat them like they are, but I think the proper way to do it – and the way I would do it – is to ice it.

To do this, first boil the litre of water and put in measuring jug and place the pallet knife in it. The reason behind this is to heat put the pallet knife up so it will ice the cake more smoothly. Now to start the icing, place the first cake onto a plate, up-side-down and, using a dessert spoon, place a dollop if icing sugar onto the cake and spread out, do this so the entire cake is covered and place the other cake on top – the right way up.

Continue icing the cake the way you have been, dipping the pallet knife in the hot water every so often, until you come to the sides. For this the dollop of icing will just slide off, so take a scrape of icing sugar with the pallet knife and spread round the side. Once the cake is done, enjoy!