I have used this recipe for a while now and it is my go-to, never fail chocolate fav. It's moist, not too rich, not too dense, not to sweet, easy and it freezes well. Unfortunately I don't know who the original source is as I was given this recipe by a good friend of mine one day, over the phone, and I scribbled it down on a scrap of paper. Thankfully I transferred it to my recipe journal! She had found it in a magazine while waiting at the hospital one day. So thank you to the hospital and magazine for sharing!
So here it is, My Cake, Your Cake's Chocolate Cake Recipe! Oh and there's a printable link at the end too!
Chocolate Cake or Cupcakes
You will need:
1 1/2 cups (330g) Caster Sugar1 cup (250g) Water
125g Unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons Cocoa
1/2 teaspoon of Bicarbonate of Soda
1 1/2 cups (250g) Self Raising Flour
2 Eggs (Room temperature)
Pre-heat your oven to 180'C or 170'C fan-forced. Next time you're at the shop and you have some lose change to spare, grab an oven thermometer from a kitchen store. One of the ones you hang from the wire shelf in your oven. I got mine for about $8 and it's awesome. For such a basic little gadget, it's been very handy to have hanging in my oven and I now know that my oven is about 5 - 10 degrees different from the dial. Who would have thought!
If you're going to bake a cake, grease and line your chosen tin. I mostly use an 8inch round (20cm). For cupcakes you will need two 12 capacity trays lined with cupcake papers as you will get 18-22 cupcakes from this recipe depending on the size of your papers and how generous you are at filling them.
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| I have found the easiest way to seperate the cupcake papers from the stack is to take them off from the bottom, not the middle |
Grab a medium saucepan (and a set of scales if you're the weighing type). Measure into your saucepan the sugar, water, butter, cocoa and bicarb.
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| Technically you're meant to sieve the cocoa, I don't, hence the lumps! |
Pour this chocolate mixture into a separate bowl and let it cool for around 30 minutes. When it's cooled, it will have formed a skin on the surface. Don't worry it's meant to do this, and it's really quite yummy, kind of fudgy, mmm ... If you do happen to be in a rush or impatient like me, then you can skip this cooling step, BUT you will need to be careful so you don't scramble the eggs!
Now add your self raising flour and eggs to the chocolate mixture and with an electric mixer, beat for about 2 minutes on high. Once mixed, pour into your cake tin or cupcake papers. If I'm doing cupcakes, I like to pour the mixture into a jug. This just makes it easier to fill the papers evenly and without spilling it everywhere.
Put your cakes/cupcakes into your pre-heated oven in the middle shelf and bake. For an 8" round cake, bake for 40-45 minutes, and for cupcakes, bake for 20-25 minutes. They are cooked with they spring back to the touch or when a toothpick poked in comes out clean! Cool on a wire rack.
Ta daaa! Now all that's left to do is to ice and decorate! This batch round I actually got 21 cupcakes. The above 12 went to a party and the rest were iced and went into the freezer for lunchboxes.
Now if you like to be more organised and give yourself a bit more time before a party, bake your cake/cupcakes 1 or 2 weeks before the party. Once baked and cooled, if you are going to fill your cake, cut in half and put a piece of baking paper in between the layers ready for the filling of choice. Then wrap 2 or 3 times in cling wrap and freeze until required. For cupcakes, put them into an airtight container and freeze until required. More often than not I will freeze my cakes. It takes some of the stress out of the decorating that is to come. Then take your cake out of the freezer just before you are ready to start decorating.
I know there are a few Thermomix owners out there, this recipe is even easier to do in your Thermomix, yay! And of course it takes less time to prepare making it much quicker and achieving the same results.
So if you are a lucky owner, here is the conversion:
- Using Raw Sugar instead of caster sugar, weigh in your raw sugar first and mill until fine (30 seconds - Speed 7)
- Weigh in each of the other ingredients (except for the flour and eggs) and mix together (Temp 90' - 6 minutes - Speed 2) At the end of this step you should still get the froth on top and you don't have to let it cool in the fridge, go straight onto the next step.
- Weigh in the flour first, then add your eggs and mix together (20 seconds - Speed 5-7) Scrape down sides and mix again (10 seconds - Speed 5-7)
- Pour mixture into cake tin or cupcake papers and bake as above.
(You may need to click on 'Download' in the top right corner for it to open the pdf file)
I hope this helps! Next time you need to bake a cake, give this one a try. I'd love to hear how it goes for you and if you have any questions please let me know, I'd be happy to help!
Keep an eye out for an update with the buttercream recipe I use!
Enjoy your baking!
x Chrys x
