Rich’s company keeps on growing and therefore I must keep on baking…
I was meant to be having some drinks with the team on Friday evening to take requests, but as I have a nightmare project at my work, by the time I got to the bar almost everyone had gone. Therefore I have had to believe that Rich has spoken to his team and this cake represents their requests. The direction I was given was chocolate.
As always, I opened my copies of Nigella and went to her chocolate section – when I did carrot cake she was unfortunately lacking. It was a toss up between her Malteser Cake from Domestic Goddess or her Old Fashion Chocolate Cake from Feast ; both looked amazing but the icing on the latter won me over. My favourite chocolate icing has been the sour cream one from Delia’s classic complete cookery course. Anyway, I could go on forever about my favourite cook books but I should really get on with the recipe!
Recipe: Quick and Easy Chocolate Cake
Ingredients: The Cake
- 200g Plain Flour
- 200g Golden Caster Sugar
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
- 1 Pinch Salt
- 50g Cocoa Powder
- 175g Butter – Room temperature and very soft
- 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 150ml Sour Cream
Instructions
- This is super easy.
- Preheat the oven to GM 4 (180 C) and grease & line 2 circular 20cm cake tins with plenty of butter and grease proof paper.
- Either, add all of the ingredients to a cake mixer and quickly mix or put them into a bowl and mix with a whisk – the electric sort makes it a lot easier! The batter that you get is quite thick but don’t be alarmed, it makes a lovely cake.
- Split the batter between the two cake tins and then put into the oven. Cook for about 25 minutes, test and if it’s not ready (ie bounces back when you touch it) put it back in for another five minutes.
- Once the cakes are done, leave them to cool on wire racks.
Recipe: Sour Cream Icing
Ingredients: The Icing
- 75g Butter
- 175g Chocolate – I use 65%
- 1 tbsp Golden Syrup
- 125ml Sour Cream
- 1 tsp of Vanilla Extract
- 300g Icing Sugar
Instructions
- On a very low heat, in a heavy pan, melt the butter and the chocolate; keep an eye on it and don’t let it get hot so that nothing goes wrong!
- Sieve the icing sugar into a large bowl to get rid of the lumps.
- Add the golden syrup to the chocolate – to get the syrup out I find it easiest to heat a tablespoon over the gas and then put that into the syrup and it slides off the spoon. Don’t heat it too much as it might ruin chocolate!
- Next, add the sour cream to the sweetened chocolate and then the vanilla.
- Whisk in the icing sugar so that the colour lightens and texture smooths.
To decorate the cake put one third of the icing on to the bottom layer and then add the next layer on top.
The whole team are seriously pumped about this cake! Thank you Mary x