Forever Chocolate Cake

Yep, another Cookbook Club recipe, this time for our IRL club - from Nagi Maehashi's book RecipeTin Eats: Dinner.  This is a fabulous cake!  And so easy to make.  It has a hint of coffee, which gives it a happy little twist, and brings out the chocolate flavour.  Nagi calls this 'My Forever Chocolate Cake'.  And it really is a winner in the easy and delicious stakes.  I'll definitely make it again.  

Nagi likes to use cup measurements, but also gives grams - yay!  As a food blogger, I spend countless moments working out measurements!  And also translating into non-metric for my fine U.S. readers :=)  Crumbs, I wish everyone used the same measures :=(  Remember the disaster I had with using suet for dumplings?  I worked out the amounts, but crazily got 'em all mixed up!  I still have bags of suet mix in my freezer...

And speaking of mistakes in the kitchen, brings to mind the time my sis-in-law was visiting and decided to make baklava.  So she laboriously hand-chopped all the nuts, as we didn't have a food processor back then, and ... used salt instead of sugar for the syrup!!  Rendering said-baklava completely inedible.  She was not a happy chappy.  I tend to sample my icing sugar every time I use it, even though I know which tin it lives in :=)

you can never have too many sprinkles!

Serves 12:

ingredients:

1¾ cups (265g./9.5 oz) plain flour

3/4 cup (60g./2 oz) cocoa powder (Dutch if possible; unsweetened!)

1½ tsp baking powder

1½ tsp bi-carb soda

2 cups (400g./14 oz) white sugar

1 tsp sea salt (Nagi says to use cooking salt, which has larger grains than table salt)

2 large eggs

1 cup (250 mL/8.5 oz) milk (cow's I guess)

1/2 cup (125 mL/4.3 oz) neutral vegetable oil (I used sunflower)

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp instant coffee powder 

1 cup (250 mL/8.5 oz) boiling water OR use freshly brewed coffee instead of the boiling water  see Notes

Chantilly Cream:

300 mL/10 oz heavy whipping cream

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 Tbs icing sugar

Decorate with whipped cream, or Chantilly cream, or buttercream icing

Lots of sprinkles for decoration!  I used pink flamingoes!  And a Flake chocolate bar, smooshed into small(er) pieces

Method:

On goes your oven to 180C/356F to heat up

Butter a 22cm/9 inch cake tin and line the base with baking paper

Into a large bowl, sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bi-carb

Add the sugar and salt, and give it all a quick whisk

In go the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla and whisk briskly (for 30 seconds says Nagi)

Whisk in the coffee powder and boiling water - the batter is thin, Nagi tells us

Pour/spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin, and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer in the centre comes out clean

Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to become completely cold

Smother it in lots of Chantilly cream, or whipped cream, or icing and throw on many delightful sprinkles

(If using Chantilly cream, just beat the ingredients together till you have lovely, firm peaks)

Notes:

Nagi says you can use full-fat or low-fat milk, so I'm guessing cow's

Use sunflower or safflower or canola oil - something neutral in flavour

Nagi doesn't say whether you use the coffee powder AND brewed coffee or just brewed coffee instead of the coffee powder and boiling water - I'm assuming she means instead of!  I just used coffee powder and boiling water anyway

She also says you can use a rectangular cake tin (33cm x 22 x5) sorry the brain gave out; I can't work that out.  Or use a bundt tin and bake for 50 mins., or 3 x 20cm/8 inch tins for 25 mins., or 2 x 22cm for 35 mins. - you get the picture!

butter and line your tin

whisk the dry ingredients together

and add the wet ingredients

whisk everything together till well-combined

whisk in the coffee and boiling water

pour the thin batter into the prepared cake tin

baked!

a beautifully moist bottom :=)

billowy Chantilly Cream

and heaps of sprinkles and pink flamingoes

  

c. Sherry M.