Had my 16-year-old-self known that one Sunday morning in the future, she’d find herself in a Kent country kitchen making a chocolate cake, she’d have probably partaken in a bit of self-harming. But, it looks as though middle-age has caught up with me, as making a chocolate cake last Sunday morning was exactly what I was doing.
You’ll remember this isn’t my first foray into cake-baking, as I made a Union Jack sponge cake last summer which, thanks to a liberal covering of cream and fruit, looked a lot better than it did when it first came out of the oven.
So why did I want to make another cake? It was The Meat Eater’s birthday, that’s why. I thought I had a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix but on unearthing all the Betty Crocker bits from the box they’re currently residing in on the dining room floor (the new kitchen looks fab but it’s a bit lacking on the storage front so the dining room’s getting some goodies from Ikea next week and we might be able to see the floor again then), I found I didn’t have any chocolate cake mix, only carrot cake mix. While I don’t have anything against carrot cake, it didn’t seem very birthday-ish, so I decided to get all domestic and make a chocolate cake from scratch.
As it was Easter Sunday and all the local supermarkets were shut (Kent has weird 80s stylee opening hours, unlike London where you can go shopping on Christmas Day if you want to), this meant I had to make do with whatever I had available in the house. I found this recipe, which looked simple enough and although I didn’t have the exact ingredients (looking at it now, the only ingredient that’s the same as the original recipe is the self-raising flour, ha), I reckoned I could substitute well enough to avoid any disasters and I had two tubs of Betty Crocker icing and four packets of Jelly Tots to cover the cake with to make it look better anyway.
This chocolate cake may not be the lightest and fluffiest cake in the world but it got a rating of ‘Yum’ from The Meat Eater, so that’s good enough for me.
- 6oz/170g Flora
- 6oz /170g granulated sugar
- 4oz/115g self-raising flour
- 4 medium eggs
- 2oz/ 55g raw cacao powder
- ½ tub Betty Crocker Vanilla Buttercream Icing
- ½ tub Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Icing
- 2 packets Jelly Tots
- Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/gas mark 5
- Grease and line two 20cm sandwich tins
- Mix the Flora and sugar together by hand or in a mixer until creamy and lighter in colour
- Sieve the cacao powder and flour into a bowl and crack one of the eggs into a cup or ramekin
- With the mixer still going, add the egg and a third of the flour mixture into the sugar and butter, add the second egg and third of the flour and add the last two eggs and flour mixture in to the butter and sugar
- Put even amounts of the mixture into the tins and spread using a knife. Put into the oven and bake for 25 minutes until springy to touch. Take out of the oven and leave them in their tins for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely
- Sandwich together the cakes with the Betty Crocker Vanilla Buttercream Icing
- Cover the top and sides of the cake with the Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Icing
- Decorate the top of the cake with the Jelly Tots