Seaneen's Sunnyside Kitchen

I made this as it was Halloween. Yes, this Halloween will be a bit more subdued, but hey any excuse for chocolate cake.

This is by all accounts a really old recipe that was originally developed by Hershey Chocolate, to highlight their cocoa powder.

I used supermarket own brand and it worked fine. Please don’t be tempted use powdered drinking chocolate, it will not taste good.

You’ll see there is coffee in this cake, don’t worry about this. I don’t like coffee flavoured desserts either. I promise you won’t taste the coffee, but it does bring out the flavour of the chocolate.

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Yes this is very rich, but its not something that you’re going to eat everyday. You won’t be disappointed, this is definitely going in the pure filth file.

Ingredients

For the cake

230 Grams Plain flour

70 Grams Cocoa powder

400 Grams Sugar

2 Tsp Bicarbonate of soda

2 Tsp Baking powder

1 Tsp Salt

2 Eggs

250ml Buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk, a 1 Tbsp of lemon juice to ordinary milk and allow to sit for a few minutes)

250ml Strong black coffee (or 1 Tbsp of instant coffee dissolved in 250ml of hot water)

125ml Vegetable oil (Best to use a flavourless oil like sunflower oil)

1Tsp Vanilla extract

For the icing

200 Grams Dark chocolate

175ml Double cream

50 Grams Butter

Method

1. This is a super easy cake to make. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees and grease and line 2 x 8 inch cake tins
2. For the cake part, combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl
3. Add the wet ingredients and mix for 90 seconds with an electric whisk
4. Pour the mix evenly between the two prepared baking tins and bake for 35 minutes
5. Remove the cakes from the oven and allow cool in their tins for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling wrack and allow to cool completely before adding the icing
6. For the ganache icing, break up the chocolate and add to a heat proof bowl.
7. Heat the cream in a saucepan until just before boiling and pour on top of the chocolate, and whisk.
8. Melt the butter and whisk into the cream and chocolate and you will soon have thick and glossy icing. Allow to cool to room temperature
9. Place one of your cake layers on a plate or cake stand. Spread about one third of the icing on top of the cake and spread evenly with a palate knife
10. Top with the second cake layer and pour one third of the icing on top, spreading evenly with a palate knife again. Spread the remaining icing around the sides, and add any other decoration you might want