Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Basic Chocolate Cake

This recipe was adapted from Sue Lawrence's Chocolate Meringue Cake recipe but it produces a lovely, moist and light chocolate cake. Girl baked this recipe in cupcake-sized silicone baking cups and it also produced lovely little cakelets, all ready to be iced.

Ingredients:
115gms butter (softened), ½ cup caster sugar, 3 eggs, 50ml milk, 100gms self-raising flour, cocoa powder

Method:
1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes usingan electric hand-mixer)
2. Add the eggs one at the time to the mixture and beat well after each addition.
3. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the mixture.
4. Add the milk to the mixture.
5. Stir gently to combine everything.
6. Pour into a greased or lined cake tin or little cupcake papers or a muffin tray...in short, whatever you want!
7. Bake at about 160 degrees until a cake tester comes out clean when pushed into the middle of the cake.**

**Girl baked the cakes at about 160 degrees (instead of the usual 180) in a fan-forced oven because the recipe produced quite a wet batter. This way, the insides got a chance to cook while the outsides didn't burn...

Variations:
1. Add chocolate chips to the batter before baking to make a choc-chip cake.
2. Leave out the cocoa powder and substitute vanilla essence to make a plain butter cake.