Hiya!
Sorry for not posting last week.... I did bake cupcakes and I
The great thing about this chocolate cake in particular, is it's made in only one bowl! Well, not really, for me, because I use multiple bowls to show you guys the ingredients. But, unless you do that.... it's a one bowl recipe. Which means easy clean up! And it's also really simple.
And yes, I know that so far, there's only been chocolate desserts. So you can tell I'm a chocaholic. But hopefully, next week, it'll be vanilla's turn! But enough of that, here's the recipe for the chocolate cake and the chocolate buttercream, and it's a one bowl recipe, yay!
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Start by preheating your oven to 170 C and butter then flour and 8 or 9 inch circular pan. I didn't have 9 inch so I used 8 inch. Oh, I also only had one pan, so I had to wait for the first cake to bake, to bake the second one. But if you have two, grease them both!
Next, grab your ingredients. Here are the wet and dry ingredients.
You will need:
- 1 + 3/4 cups of all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup of cocoa powder
- 1 + 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 + 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
- 1 cup of milk
- 2 tsp of vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup of coffee
If you don't like coffee or have coffee, you can easily substitute this with a cup of hot water instead. Also, the coffee will not change the flavor of the cake, it'll just enhance the flavor of the chocolate in the cake :)
First, into a large bowl, add in the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Then give it all a good whisk to combine them.
Next, add in the vegetable oil, milk, vanilla, eggs and whisk it all up. And just a heads up, this next picture might not look as appetizing....
Lastly, pour in the coffee or hot water, and mix it up. It might look like it will be too runny, but don't worry, it'll pull it self together as you whisk.
Now, pour the batter into the prepared pans, and bake it for about 30 minutes. It does help to have two pans because then you can actually see if you're dividing equally. Also, try not to overfill the pans.
Baking times, however, will vary. My cakes too about 40 minutes instead. Just keep an eye on them, don't open the oven door too much and poke in a toothpick to see if it comes out clean.
Once they're done, let them cool in the pans for around 15 minutes and then flip the cakes onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely. You can even put them in the fridge to speed up the process.
While the cake was cooling, I made some buttercream to frost it. This recipe however, was not my favorite, mainly because it was too thick and dark for my taste. But, if that's the sort of texture you prefer, then go ahead! The recipe is below.
But you can also use ANY other frosting recipe that you like! It's all up to you!
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First, grab your ingredients. Also, the reason my butter looks like that is because I forgot to take it out earlier to come to room temperature, so I used a box grater instead to grate it all up to form small shreds that came to room temperature quickly. That is a good tip.
You will need:
- 2 sticks of butter
- 2 + 1/2 cups icing sugar
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 3-4 tbsp of milk
Start by putting all your butter in a bowl (I used my stand mixer for this) and cream it until it's nice and pale.
Next add in your flour and cocoa powder. I sifted mine into the butter. Also, don't add it in all at once, and mix it in on a low speed, gradually increasing.
Then add in the milk. Depending on how smooth you want your buttercream, you can add as much or as little milk as you like.
Now, to assemble the cake....
Put it on a round cake board with a smear of frosting underneath to hold to cake in place. The weird cross hatched lines on top are because of the cooling rack. I covered it in only one layer of frosting, mainly because nobody in my family likes too much frosting and I didn't have the time to do a crumb coat (a thin coat of frosting that seals all the crumbs for the final layer to be nice and neat). But it still looked good.
Make sure you cool the cake COMPLETELY before frosting it, otherwise the butter in the frosting will melt because of the heat of the cake!
Enjoy! You deserve it. See ya net time! Mariam.
