Devil's Food Cake! Ooooh!

A few posts ago I made Angel Food Cake for my Mom, and today I whipped out the cookbook again to make its counterpart for me! It really is just a chocolate cake with a few extra additions, such as my new friend food dye! It has a little bit of red dye in it which I know is in a red velvet cake that I really want to make soon!









It called for whipped cream, but my little country shop only had fresh cream, so I had to make do with that! I also added a little bit of strawberry jam between the layers and some chopped nuts to the top. Yum! Mary G called over to have some with tea and she enjoyed a big wedge and brought some home too:)

The birthday present I've been working on can finally be posted after the weekend as I'll have given it to a lovely friend at long last!
I've been scouring crafty blogs for ideas for my sewing box bits and listening to Tired Pony. It's quite a wonderful way to spend your time.
I've spotted a pair of beautiful key earrings on Etsy that I want, so I might purchase them tomorrow! I believe you should always get yourself little treats;)

Devil's Food Cake!
180g butter
385g caster sugar
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour
75g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
70g cocoa powder
3 teaspoons instant coffee granules
125ml water
125ml milk
1/2 tsp red food coloring
300ml whipping cream, whipped

rich chocolate frosting
60g dark eating chocolate. chopped
60g butter, chopped

-Pre-heat the oven to 170C. Grease and line bases of two 20cm round cake tins.
-Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy; beat in eggs, one at a time.
-Fold in sifted flours, soda and cocoa powder with combined ocffee, the water, milk and coloring, in two batches.
-Pour mixture into tins; bake for 40 minutes. Stand for 5 minutes before turning cakes onto wire racks to cool.
-Make the frosting!
-Sandwich the cold cakes with whipped cream, then top with frosting:)

For the frosting:
Combine the chocolate and butter in a small heatproof bowl over a small saucepan of simmering water, stir until smooth, then remove from the heat.
Cool at room temperature, stirring occasionally, until frosting is spreadable.

Enjoy!x

Feathery Fudge Cake

Did some baking there at the weekend!
Why I am stating that like it's an unusual event, I don't know. Go with it.
I didn't follow the recipe (more like I just didn't read it properly than me free styling it) accordingly, so it's not quite 'fudge'. I only added about half of the melted chocolate to the cake mix than I was suppossed to. I did add mixed nuts to the mix though which was pretty nice and went down well with the family. I tried to make that vanilla buttercream that I put on last week's bundt cake, but that was a failure to say the least. So I resorted to the tried and tested plain buttercream (no fanciness there, tempting failure) so I sandwiched it all together with it and placed some on top with chocolate sprinkles.
The recipe is quite simple and straight forward (when I read it properly) so I'll post it up here when I get back home as it's in one of Mom's old cookbooks. The cake was really soft and light, so it's quite easy to eat a sizeable wedge of it and not realise until it's too late... Love to you all! :)

5 Minute Chocolate Cake attempt

One day last week, Griffin found a recipe on the internet-with accompanying photos of success- claiming to give you chocolate cake in a mug after 3 minutes in the microwave. I decided I had to try this because I was curious if 1) it would even work and 2) I could have chocolate cake pretty much on demand if it did.
So last night Siob and I rolled up our sleeves and gave it a go. We did all the recipe told us to and popped the mixture in the microwave.
Result: epic fail.
You have to let it sit for a few minutes until the cake is finished setting, but even after 5 minutes, it was still cooking. I popped it out and we tasted the top of it which, as my dad pointed out, tasted like rubber. It was far too tough for cake and then in the centre it had hardened like a rock.
So I think I'll be making chocolate cake the ol' fashioned way from now on... That girl and her charming piggy mug sooooo lied...
(I don't know why the photos are saving backwards in sequence...)

Chocolate cake for you, chocolate cake for me

We all love chocolate. I am slightly shocked (and appalled) when someone says they're not a fan of it. Weirdos. So before a trip to my friend Jo's during the summer, I tried out Jamie Oliver's chocolate party cake from his cookbook The Return of The Naked Chef and it is bang on. I found Rachel Allen's one turned out a bit dry for my liking and I think the noticable difference is how the cocoa for Jamie's is mixed in with 4 tablespoons of boiling water and so is a paste when added to the flour mixture and not just a powder.

Strawberries just had to go in to the cake, and I went a bit wild with them, slicing them and placing them between the 2 sponges with the chocolate butter cream icing and a drizzling of melted chocolate (note- the cake is not for the faint hearted!) as well as on top of the cake.

I then melted chocolate and poured it over the top; viola- a dreamy chocolate cake that will take about 4 people the guts of 2 lazy days to eat. It's far from perfect looking, but I didn't mind once I tasted it. All it would then fit in cos it was so tall was a big shoe box. I eventually got it to Jo's after delicately moving it accordingly with road turns on the bus for three hours:)

Must be served with pots and pots of loose tea:)