American chocolate cake

-

This a recipe I've used before and it's a lovely moist cake and it keeps well too [if there's any left!!].

275g sr flour
3 level tbspns cocoa
175g caster sugar
1 level tspn bicarbonate os soda
300ml milk
150ml corn oil
3 tbspns golden syrup
1/2 tspn vanilla essence

icing:
25g cocoa
3-4 tbspns hot water
25g soft butter
100g icing sugar [sieved]

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F
Grease and line 2x20cm sandwich tin or a 20cm springform tin

Sift flour, cocoa a nd sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the middle.
Dissolve the bicarb in 1 tbspn of the milk and then pour into the flour with the rest of the milk, oil, syrup and vanilla essence. Beat well till a smooth batter.
Pour into tin/tins and bake for about 35-40 mins till the cakes spring back when pressed with fingertip.
Turn on wire rack to cool.


Make the icing - put the cocoa in a bowl with the hot water and butter and beat till smooth and butter is blended in. Beat in the icing sugar and then sandwich the cakes together or smooth it over the top of the large cake.

The cake has a lovely texture, moist and dense.

This is my Easter cloth which has had it's annual airing today!


Comments

Norm said…
Mmm, that looks delicious! I love a good moist chocolate cake, but have never managed to make one myself. Hope you had a lovely Easter weekend!
6/4/10 10:44 am
Snowy said…
Thanks Kate. It's one of our favourite cakes.
12/4/10 2:32 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lemon Coconut Slices

-
Image
I needed a simple recipe to use up some lemons, and found many versions of this uncooked tray bake [I suppose it's not really a tray bake as it's not baked, but it's made in my Delia tray bake tin!]. I played around with several recipes till I made exactly what I wanted - a good lemony flavoured slice, with a decent amount of coconut and a lemon icing. It was perfect to make for my daughter's recent visit. We brought a lemon tree back from France and it now lives in the greenhouse. It was a gift from our neighbours, and has faithfully produced lemons every year. The lemons I used in this recipe were from this tree, and they are much juicier than the ones you buy. You put 125ml of condensed milk in a pan with 125g butter and stir till the butter has melted. In a food processor or using a plastic bag and a rolling pin, break a 250g packet of Nice biscuits into crumbs and put into a bowl with 1 tspn of grated lemon zest, 1 tspn lemon extract and 85g dessicated coco
Read more

Aberffraw cakes

-
Image
These were mentioned recently on the GBBO, so I thought I'd find out more about them. They're made on the Isle of Anglesey and are a traditional biscuit really, not a cake. They're served sprinkled with sugar and even with cream and jam, like a scone. The bit I liked was that a scallop shell is pressed into the top to give it a shell-like pattern. Nowadays, a lot of the Aberffraw cakes have the pattern put on with a knife. I have a bag of scallop shells, brought back from France so I used a genuine one to make my pattern. The recipe is a 3.2.1  - quite common for biscuits. This means 3 parts flour to 2 parts fat to 1 part sugar. 175g flour 110g butter 55g caster sugar a little milk more caster sugar for sprinkling over Preheat oven 190C/gas5. Grease a baking sheet. I used a processor to make my dough. Put flour and sugar in a bowl and rub in the butter. Bind together with a litle milk to make a soft dough. Roll out and cut out circles. I used a 7cm cutter an
Read more

My favourite Plum Tart

-
Image
 I found a punnet of ripe plums lurking,  so made my favourite plum tart recipe with a few tweaks. I didn’t have the correct amount of plums so couldn’t pack them in, but it still tastes delicious. It has a layer of pastry, then cinnamon sugar, plums and a delicious topping of brown sugar, egg and crème fraîche. Pastry- 250g plain flour, 175g butter cut into pieces, 1 medium egg yolk Filling- 1/2 tspn cinnamon mixed with 2 tbspn soft brown sugar, 750g of plums, halved then quartered. Topping- 1medium egg and 1 yolk, 125g crème fraîche, 45g soft brown sugar Oven 200C/gas6.  28cm flan tin   Rub fat into flour.,Add yolk and 1-2 tbspn water to make a firm dough. Roll out and line the tin. Prick the base and put in fridge for 30 mins. Filling- Sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the pastry. Arrange the plums cut side up, packing tightly. Any left over cut in half again and make a pattern on top, cut side down.  Topping- mix all the ingredients together and spoon over the plums.  Bake for 25-30 min
Read more