The trick with chocolate cake, and our excuse for making more of them, is experimenting with how much of the flour can be replaced with cocoa without the cake losing structural integrity.
In principle, the cake is just a version of a standard Victoria Sponge cake (equal weight of egg, butter, sugar, and self-raising flour). Now, your average chocolate cake maker will foolishly suggest adding a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder. We have found that replacing more than half of the flour with cocoa and you’ll start to have problems (think about it – flour mixed with water has a very different consistency from cocoa mixed with water), but you can just about get away with that – certainly a third of the flour can be replaced with cocoa although you might need to add a bit more baking powder to replace the self-raising flour.
Victoria Sponge Cake
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 200g margarine
- 200g sugar
- 200g flour
Method
- Blend the margarine and sugar together, then beat in the eggs.
- Finally fold in the flour.
- Bake for 20 minutes at 180 C.
Extreme Chocolate Caking
Additional ingredients
- 70g cocoa
- 2 tsp baking powder (to replace the 70g flour
- banana
- jam
- walnuts – chopped
- Anything else that takes your fancy – a splash of kahlua?
- MORE CHOCOLATE! You’ll need about 375g more maximum-cocoa (e.g. cooking) chocolate
Method
- Once you’ve got your basic cake mix (i.e mixed your flour/cocoa, eggs, butter, sugar) break up about 125g of chocolate into smallish lumps (half single squares) and mix that, walnuts, kahlua, etc into the mix.
- Bake in two dishes for 20 minutes or so. Note: because of the additional chocolate, it won’t firm-up in the same way as your average cake.
- After cooking, let it rest for a while on a couple of wire racks. When it has cooled a bit, put one of the cake halves on a large plate and generously spread it with jam, and cover in slices of banana.
- Melt the remaining 250-ish grams of chocolate in a saucepan with a tablespoon or two of water (better still: brandy!) on a very low heat. This should give you a fantastic replacement for boring conventional chocolate icing.
- Spread a layer of your melted chocolate over the banana/jam then plant your second cake-half on the first. cover the whole thing melted chocolate.
- Welcome to the world of extreme chocolate-cakery!