Chocolate Cake and An Apology

ROSALINE CAME HOME. And then I went away. And then I came home. And she is away again. So I still haven't managed to see her which is very upsetting. However in her absence I baked a lot, mainly to try and do something other than wistfully wish I was also travelling. However I didn't blog about it - dreadful I know - so that's what the apology is for.

But I'm back to my blogging ways in full force, having been inspired by Rosaline's multitude of posts. And trust me, this chocolate cake is worth the wait.

My uncle is one of those lucky people in that whatever he cooks will be absolutley delicious. Especially his chocolate flapjacks. So having been given the daunting task of making his birthday cake, I knew I would have to step outside my comfort zone. He loves chocolate, as most people do (except for those crazy ones- I don't associate with those people) and so after many hours of recipe searching I discovered what I felt was a suitably exciting but not too fancy chocolate cake recipe and so I set to work.

The original recipe calls this 'Moist Chocolate Cake' which although is true, moist is not a very  pleasant word so I would probably replace 'Moist' with Intense, or Delicious, or possibly Extraordinary.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cup plain flour

2 cups granulated sugar (I was unsure about this but it was fine)

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

a pinch of salt

2 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup melted butter

a few drops of vanilla extract

2 tsp of instant coffee in 1 cup boiling water

200g dark chocolate

200ml double cream

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C and grease and flour two cake tins

2. Sift flour, cocoa powder and baking powder into a bowl. Add sugar and salt and mix together.

3. Add eggs, buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. When smooth stir in the hot coffee mixture until fully incorporated. The batter will be runny and not really look like cake batter but don't panic, it's supposed to look like that.

4. Pour the batter into each tin in equal amounts and bake for about 35 minutes or until a skewer comes out almost clean with a few moist crumbs attached.

5. Leave the cakes in the tins for about 15 minutes and then tip them out onto wire racks to cool.

6. Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Once melted add the double cream and whisk to combine until smooth. You can fill and ice the cake as soon as it's cool or leave the ganache to thicken for a couple of hours. I filled the cake with about 1/3 of the ganache and then used the rest on top, smoothing it down with a palette knife.

It went down very well and my uncle was impressed which was quite exciting! It's really easy and so delicious and I highly recommend it.

-Ellie x