Chocolate Midnight Cake

I've never baked as much in my life as during COVID.  Cakes mostly, but muffins, pies and tarts too.  I've been perusing a lot of cookbooks lately, and recently came across this book by Samin Nosrat - Salt Fat Acid Heat.  I really love this book!  It's full of food drawings (you can even buy a set of the artist's foodie handiwork), and lots of information about how cooking works.  

There are lots of recipes, of course, but also explanations of how and why things happen when you cook - things like Using Acid, or How to Salt, or What is Heat?  Very useful for a novice cook, I think.  She explains about Fat, and Rendering, and Fixing Emulsions, and about Using Recipes, amongst other things.  As Samin says: ' A good recipe can be invaluable, ... but no recipe is infallible.'  Never a truer word, I think ...  

just a wee bit of cream :-)

Serves 10-12:


ingredients:


50g. (1/2 cup) good-quality cocoa powder

300g. (1½ cups) caster sugar

1 tsp sea salt flakes

310g. (1¾ cups) plain flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp vanilla extract

120 mL (1/2 cup) flavourless oil (I used sunflower)

360 mL (1½ cups) boiling water, or strong coffee - I used 3 heaped teaspoons of strong, instant coffee powder with the boiling water

2 large eggs, lightly whisked

Chantilly cream:

500 mL (2 cups) whipping cream

1 heaped tbs icing sugar

1 healthy tsp vanilla extract


1 chocolate Flake bar for the top (optional)



Method:


Pre-heat your oven to 180C/350F

Grease two 20cm./8 inch cake tins, then line the bottom with baking paper

Now grease the baking paper, tip some plain flour into each tin, making sure that the flour goes all around the tins

Tip out the excess flour, and leave the tins till needed - luckily for me, Mr P. always does the greasing :-)

Sift the cocoa, sugar, salt, flour and baking soda into a large mixing bowl

Grab a whisk, and now whisk these ingredients together well

Mix the vanilla and oil together in a medium bowl (or a Pyrex jug), then add the boiling water/coffee into this mixture

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, and gradually stir  in the wet ingredients

Whisk in the eggs, till your batter is smooth - don't worry if it looks thin; it's meant to!

Put half the batter into each tin (Samin suggests dropping the tins onto the counter to get out any air bubbles, but I forgot)

Place the tins into the upper third of your oven for 25-30 minutes, till a skewer comes out clean, and the top of the cakes spring back to the touch

Cool them completely on a wire rack, take them out of the tins and pull off the paper

Put a thick layer of the cream that you have whipped with the vanilla and sugar into firm peaks, onto one layer of the cake

Whack on the second layer, (but gently!) and spread that glorious cream all over the top, and down the sides if you have enough

Sprinkle the Flake bar over the top, if using

Chill for a couple of hours before eating

Keeps well in an airtight container in the fridge for several days


Notes:

As the cookbook is American, I used Samin's U.S. amounts for the cake, but put them in grams and mLs for Aussie readers.  Does that make sense?  As in, a half cup for Aussies is 125 mL, but an American cup is smaller, so I used 120 mL, and so on ...

If your cakes end up slightly lopsided (like mine did), trim them a bit with a sharp knife before putting the cakes together

Don't know why it's called a Midnight cake, but as I used some black cocoa in the recipe, it did in fact turn into quite the Midnight cake

sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl

whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ones

whisk the eggs into the mixture

out of the oven after 30 minutes

level off the top if it's a wee bit crooked (that bit at the back looks like a spider!)

smother your cake with lots of Chantilly cream

ready to eat

yep, we hoed into it gleefully and with gusto

Princess Pia displaying her piece of cake before chowing down

a slightly grubby library copy :-)