Chocolate Cake

So I'm entering into (Not Quite) Nigella's baking/chocolate cake competition:) Not because I'm a stellar baker, but because droolworthy recipes should really be shared:)

This is my favourite cake recipe at the moment. It’s moist and fudgy, with a dark rich chocolate flavour and is covered with mouth-watering ganache. The recipe can be found here from the Epicurious website and is designed to produce a double layered cake but I usually make two separate cakes (I get twice the amount of icing/decorating fun lol).

Coffee and chocolate mixture

At first I was a bit apprehensive about the coffee content in the recipe, but you really can’t taste it at all in the end product, it simply acts to bring out the flavour of the chocolate:)

Dry Mixture

Wet Mixture

The addition of buttermilk helps with keeping the cake moist, almost fudgy. Another great thing about this recipe for me is that the fat content is attributed to oil and not butter. Firstly, it’s better for our hearts, and secondly, it adds to the softer crumb and overall texture of the cake, which would otherwise be a little harder if butter were used.

Into the oven

I use two 20cm round cake tins and the mixture almost comes to the top of them.

Ready for icing

At this point, the cakes have been baked for just over an hour and have been left to cool completely. The recipe says at this stage you can wrap it up in cling wrap to keep overnight if you want to ice it later, but I never do – by this stage, I’m hungry for cake! Being the time efficient person I am, the ganache has already been made and ready for spreading:)

Chocolate for the icing

Ganache

The ganache is easy to make, simply heating up the cream, sugar and glucose syrup and then adding chocolate. The recipe also asks for some butter to be melted in afterwards, but I always forget and never seem to notice anything wrong

The first one was sprinkled with cachous. I’m sure other people will think of more creative and exciting ways to decorate a cake, but I love these silver balls – so pretty!

The second cake was topped with little coloured chocolate pieces, what better to dress a chocolate cake than...more chocolate!

Goodness inside

This is a great recipe, being easy to make and utterly delicious. I’ve considered cutting the recipe in half (to only make 1 singular cake), but having 1.5 eggs in a recipe is awkward and there’s nothing like the comfort of knowing there is More Cake, even if we finish this one lol.
I highly recommend this recipe - give it a go:)