Adam wanted chocolate cake for his 5th birthday. Plain chocolate cake for a birthday? a little bit boring I think. So I decided to upgrade it a bit, hence I flicked through my recipe books and found this nice recipe from Nigella's Kitchen

Its called Devil's food cake because the chocolate is so rich it's almost sinful- I'm guessing.


It calls for a load of dark chocolate- and dark chocolate is what it definitely needs. It make the cake much less sweeter then expected for a chocolate cake- hence 'tak cepat muak'. (you don't get sick of chocolate that easily).

in terms of decorating, i followed what Nigella did and didn't try that hard to smooth the icing over the cake.


ingredients:

cake:
50g best quality cocoa powder
100g dark muscovado sugar
250ml boiling water
125g soft unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

(please note that almost all vanilla extract/ essences contain alcohol- hence i omit them from the recipe altogether)

for the frosting:
125ml water
30g dark muscovado sugar
175g unsalted butter
300g best quality dark choclate, finely chopped

2 x 20cm sandwich tins

method:

for the cake:

1. preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. line the sandwich tins.
2. put cocoa and 100g mucovado sugar in a bowl and pour in boiling water. mix and set aside.
3. cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy.
4. sift the flour, baking powder and soda bicarb together and set aside.
5. beat the vanilla in the creamed butter and sugar, continue mixing and add in one egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of flour mixture, then the second egg.
6. keep mixing the rest of the dry ingredients, then finally mix in and fold in the cocoa mixture.
7. devide the mixture into the two tins and bake for 30 min. once cooked, take the tins out and leave them to cool for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

1. put the water, 30g muscovado sugar and 175g butter in a pan to melt.
2. when the mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add in the chopped chocolate. mix until it turns smooth and glossy.
3. leave to stand for about an hour, whisking every now and then- the icing will thicken in time but will never by stiff like buttericing.