Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

 

(and sprinkles!)

I originally started off this post with "There isn't too much to say about this cake", but I quickly scratched the whole past to start again after I remembered what actually happened. Making this cake was absolutely terrible!
After very much enjoying the cake made from the Women's Weekly recipe (see post below), I decided to re-bake it so I could take it to school and share it with my friends. The batter was easy enough to whip up, but once cooked, it yielded a very obvious problem; the cake was about half as high as a normal cake should be. I had once before had this same problem when using a too-large springform pan, but I did not expect this to happen with the smaller-sized springform pan I had since purchased and was using for this cake.
Nevertheless, a cake only a few centimetres high resulted, as my infamous baking-panic set in. The only viable option was to bake another cake, so I proceeded to do so, opting to sandwich the them together with some buttercream.
But of course, the second cake would not be without its fair share of dramas. I had used up the last of the greaseproof paper for the first cake, and assumed a large greasing with ghee would suffice. Nup. The soft cake stuck to the bottom of the pan, and I was forced to salvage what I could and stick it all together. The good news however,was that I don't think this was noticable at all when the cake was actually served.
I quite liked the pairing of the vanilla buttercream with this cake, and a dash of sprinkles gave it a birthday-cake type of quality which is always nice. Despite the drama I experienced, it was a tasy and a very easy to prepare cake which I will definitely be using again. 

The recipe below is for one single, unlayered cake. It can be either split and cooked in two batches (if using a smaller pan), or can be doubled, if a double-layer cake is desired.

Also you might already be aware of my inability to quote how much buttercream is required, so I apologise. Just have as look at the cake and judge how much you'll need. Sorry :(

(Adapted from the Australian Women's Weekly recipe)


Rich Chocolate Cake

For the cake:

• 200g (1 1/3 cups) self-raising flour
• 50g (1/2 cup) cocoa powder
• 125g soft butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 275g (1 1/4 cups) caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 160mL (2/3 cup) water

1.  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease and line a 20cm baking pan.
2. Sift the flour and cocoa into a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and mix with an electric mixer on low speed until combined.
4. Raise mixer speed to medium and beat for a further three minutes (the mixture should be smooth and creamy, and the colour should lighten slightly)
5. Pour mixture into cake tin and bake for approximately 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
6. Allow cake to cool for five minutes in its tin before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

I used some of the batter to make a few cupcakes, too. They were excellent and confirmed the fact this same recipe can be used to make cupcakes, which is always awesome.

Cookie Monster Cake

The fact my cousin was turning two was more than enough reason to bake another cake, and more importantly, this cake. Despite the fact she's too young to say much more than "dada", let alone understand what the cake was supposed to be, I regarded it the perfect oppurtunity to try a cake which I had wanted to for a while. I'd always had intentions of trying out the Cookie Monster Cupcakes I saw somewhere, but decided I'd attempt those another time, as a cake was much more suitable for a birthday. 

Google Images shows up elaborate creations when "Cookie Monster cake" is searched, but I figured a simple cake covered in blue icing with Cookie Monster's eyes and mouth made out of fondant would suffice.
A difficulty I encountered with this particular cake was trying to figure out how to colour the fondant black; i've never seen black food colouring at the supermarket, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on some "proper" gel/paste food colouring which I'd hardly ever use. The only solution was trial and error, which luckily, worked out on the first run. Trialling it out first on some buttercream, a few massive tablespoons of cocoa got the icing to a very dark colour, but, as expected, not completely black. I hoped for the best as I poured in some red and blue food colouring, and the result was an unmistakable black. Success! Transferring it into fondant was easy enough, and made an excellent mouth for my cake. I also made a fondant cookie, experimenting with cocoa and colouring the cookie as well as the fondant chcolate chips. Of course a real cookie would be fine to use, but I didn't have any on hand and I think the fondant cookie suits the rest of the cake better.I used marshmallow fondant for my cake, but I see no reason that store-bought, ready-made icing would not work.

The cake itself was made from a recipe from an Australian Women's Weekly cookbook and was incredibly easy to make as well as delicious. I was actually quite skeptical that a cake with little more direction than to put everything in a bowl and mix it for a few minutes with an electric mixer would yield anything extraordinary, so I was incredibly impressed with the result. You could substitute the cake for any other chocolate cake recipe, or indeed, any other type of cake, but hey, who doesn't love chocolate cake?
Below is the recipe for just the cake I used on the inside. I will also attach how I created all the other parts of the face, but be aware that I tend to do things in strange ways and they may not be the best instructions to follow. However I'm sure the photo is pretty self explanatory anyway, so...sweet as.

(Adapted from the Australian Women's Weekly) 

Rich Chocolate Cake

For the cake:

• 200g (1 1/3 cups) self-raising flour
• 50g (1/2 cup) cocoa powder
• 125g soft butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 275g (1 1/4 cups) caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 160mL (2/3 cup) water

1.  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease and line a 20cm baking pan.
2. Sift the flour and cocoa into a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and mix with an electric mixer on low speed until combined.
4. Raise mixer speed to medium and beat for a further three minutes (the mixture should be smooth and creamy, and the colour should lighten slightly)
5. Pour mixture into cake tin and bake for approximately 35-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
6. Allow cake to cool for five minutes in its tin before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the face:

1. Cut out two uniform circles from white fondant icing using the rim of a stainless steel cup (or circle cookie cutter or what have you)
2.  Colour a small amount of fondant black, then roll it out on a flat surface before using a sharp knife to cut out the mouth shape.
3. With the remaining black fondant, roll into two equal sized balls, flattening them slightly to form the eyeballs.

I don't really now how to explain how I made the cookie (sorry!), so either develop your own method, use an actual chocolate-chip cookie, or just omit it completely; it's not entirely necessarry. 

Then just cover your cake in some blue buttercream and position the eyes, eyeballs, mouth and cookie (if using one) on the cake, as shown in the photo.

Chocolate Cupcakes

The Chocolate Brownie Cake I made a few weeks ago yielded a large amount of leftover ganache, leaving me with a few options: throw it away, bake a matching cake, or pass it off to a certain male sibling to eat. The first option was out of the question and hey, any excuse to make a cake, right? Out came the trusty Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake reipe and into the oven went twenty-four cupcakes in brightly coloured cupcakes cases.
What came out of the oven was a sight which can only really be described as hideous. The last time I made this cake, while not affecting the taste in any way, it did sink in just a tiny bit, and the same thing happened to many of these cupcakes. Far from the lovely, domed cupcakes which are ideal, these were some of the ugliest cupcakes I had ever seen. Needless to say, I was sent into the infamous panic mode I adopt during the creation of almost everything I bake. Twenty four cupcakes isn't exactly a number that you can just throw away, so it was all up to the icing to fix things. Luckily, (cupcake) justice prevailed and the cupcakes proved to be nothing that a good dollop of ganache couldn't fix.
I thought that the original recipe would not make enough cupcakes, so I mentally calculated the amounts of the ingredients and used the equivalent of one and a half batches worth of ingredients. They tasted delicious in the end and I comtemplated for a brief second as to why I didn't do four unit maths. Mentally calculating cupcake ratios surely qualifies me for that kind of stuff, no?
Ahem anyways.

As a result of this, I'm not entirely sure how many just one regular quantity will make, but eh, you can figure it out on your own :P. The recipe is exactly the same as the one I have blogged before, just in cupcake form. They will more like likely end up hideous, so be sure to apply generous amounts of ganache.

Oh and just a side note, I wasn't able to cook with eggs that day so I had to use egg replacement powder. That stuff is actually pretty awesome in cakes, just as good as real eggs and particularly helps cakes stay moist. :)
 
(Adapted from Nigella Lawson's Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake recipe)

For the cake: 

• 200g plain flour
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 40g cocoa
• 175g soft unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla essence (use extract if you have it)
• 150 mL sour cream

For the ganache: 

• 75g unsalted butter
•  175g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
•  300g icing sugar
• 125mL sour cream
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

1.  Preheat oven to 180 degrees and line a muffin tray with patty cases.
2. Put everything into a food processor and blitz until you have a smooth, thick batter. (Seriously, that's it. I usually get scared that the batter is too thick, so i splash in a bit of milk while I'm blitzing it).
3.  Bake for around 20 minutes or when until a skewer inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean.
4. Allow cupcakes to cool for five minutes in the muffin tin before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
5. When  cakes are completely cool, prepare the ganache. Melt the chocolate and butter together by placing them in a bowl over a pot of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally.
6. When the mixture has finished melting, sift the icing sugar  into a small bowl while the chocolate mixture cools. Add the sour cream and vanilla and then the icing sugar into the chocolate mixture, whisking while the icing sugar is added to prouduce a silky smooth concoction.
7. Frost the cupcakes. Yay.

Edit: I just realised that almost every post on here has been about a chocolate recipe, with many consecutive ones in the past few weeks. Unfortunately, I can't break that with my next post, but I am hoping to do so after that!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are photos at the end, I promise! 

I don't have much to say about this recipe, chocolate chip cookies kinda speak for themselves, don't they?

This recipe was adapted from the "Foolproof Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe" from raspberri cupcakes. Putting the word "foolproof" in the recipe's title is a big call, and I've had issues with recipes from this blog before so I was a tad anxious.However, the recipe looked easy enough, and the cookies did in fact turn out very well.

I'm yet to meet a person who isn't sold on the deliciousness of Subway Cookies, and I, like many others, have found myself converted to soft, chewy cookies over the crunchy ones. These cookies can be baked for longer to make them crunchy, or taken out of the oven when they are just cooked to keep them chewy/soft.

The recipe on the blog speaks the truth - the cookies will spread quite a bit. I made some of mine too big and ran out of space on the trays, so some of them did get stuck together.

I also had some issues where greasing was concerned. If you're Indian (or Fijian-Indian like me), you should (almost) definitely be familiar with ghee, which is clarified butter. My mum brushes it onto her rotis, and since her little ghee tin is next to the pastry brush I use to grease my pans, I usually just use the ghee in place of butter. However, we're temporarily out of ghee, meaning I had to use normal butter. The difference the ghee makes was very noticable as most of the cookies were stuck firmly onto the butter-greased baking paper, resulting in cookies with imcomplete looking undersides when I finally pried them off the paper. Hopefully my dad will make another trip to one of the random "Fijian/Indian/Sri Lankan/Pacific Island" shops in the area before I attempt my next batch..

The cookies were still tasty, though, and I shall leave you with the recipe and some.... photos.

(Adapted from raspberri cupcakes' Foolproof Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 125g butter, softened
• 1 1/4 cups tightly packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 cups plain flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and  line two large baking trays with greased baking paper.
2. Beat the sugar and butter with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy.
3. Stir in the vanilla and egg until just combined.
4. Stir in the flour and baking powder until just combined.
5. Fold the chocolate chips through the mixture, aiming to distribute as evenly throughout the mixture as possible.
6. Place heaped teaspoons of mixture onto the baking trays.Ensure there is plenty of space for them to be able to spread while cooking!
7. Cook for 10-15 minutes, or until cookies turn golden (or golden brown if you want a crunchier cookie).
8. Allow to cool in trays before transferring cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

The photos I post are never anything special, they're more just to show what my end product looked like for these posts. This recipe yielded even worse photos than usual, as I only remembered to take a photo for the blog when I had individually wrapped a bunch of them a few minutes before I had to go to school. Soz guise.

 

Oh, and there's also this photo from when they were in the oven. Yep, oven light just helps the whole photo reach a new level of amazingness (*Cough*). Aw come on, you know what a chocolate chip cookie looks like. I'm just here to talk.