I managed to have a birthday come and go without a cake this year and to be honest I feel a little devastated to admit that... I'm not sure this has happened before and I'm pretty certain it shouldn't happen again!
Anyway, to make up for it I made my 'effort' cake yesterday afternoon to go with tea for a special friend :)
Dark Chocolate Tray Cake
500ml Flour
500ml Sugar
pinch of Salt
5ml Bicarbonate of Soda
125g butter (or margarine if you're not a purist)
250ml water
125ml Oil
125ml Cocoa Powder
2 Eggs (I choose big ones from my hens)
125ml buttermilk
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius and grease a large baking tray.
Sift flour, sugar, salt and bicarb into a bowl. Well, that's what the recipe I got says... In reality there's absolutely nothing wrong with dumping the ingredients in a bowl and using a whisk to mix them up whilst adding a little air.
Put the butter, water, oil and cocoa in a microwaveable jug and heat through (basically so the butter melts and they can be mixed).
While this cools slightly beat the eggs and buttermilk. Now add wet ingredients to dry and mix without killing them! (that's 'Lauren' for "fold in gently")
Pour into the prepared tray and bake for 25minutes. This time is a guideline only - which means you should start testing after 25 min... yesterday's cake took closer to 35minutes before my skewer came out clean. Don't panic, just give it another few minutes at a time!
Cool and ice in the tray.
Mind-blowing chocolate Icing
75g butter
30ml cocoa powder
45ml buttermilk
5ml vanilla essence
375ml icing sugar
Melt butter and then add all the other ingredients and mix until there re no lumps. The original recipe had elaborate instructions but I'm of the view that things should be kept simple unless it's absolutely necessary to make them complicated and in this case it definitely doesn't need to be complicated!
Pour over the partially (or completely) cooled cake.
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