Chocolate cake

I know it looks a bit weird, you'll see why further down



This is a really fantastic chocolate cake. Like something you might buy in a shop, which is my highest accolade. It's dark and rich but also springy and light at the same time. Bliss.




It's also very, very easy. So imagine my shame when I managed to fuck the whole thing up anyway by picking the wrong-size cake tin, meaning it bubbled up and went everywhere and then generally collapsed and looked odd. Stupid me.



damnitall


Anyway, it's easy peasy to avoid this kind of disaster - use the right sized tin, which ought to be 2 x 23cm sandwich tins or 1 x 23cm sandwich tin if you're doing this in half quantities.

So here we go - don't be spooked by the long list of ingredients.

Chocolate cake

225g plain flour
350g sugar
85g cocoa powder
1.5 tsp baking powder
1.5tsp bicarb soda
2 eggs
250ml milk
125ml veg oil - I used groundnut
2 tsp vanilla extract (I think this is too much - I think vanilla essence makes things taste a bit plasticky - next time I will halve this...)
250ml boiling water

1 Put everything except the boiling water into a bowl and stir until smooth

2 Gradually add the boiling water and incorporate, stirring each sploosh in - it'll end up very wet and this is normal.

3 And that's it! Pour into your appropriately-sized tin or tins and bake for between 30-35 mins at 180C, or 170C for fan ovens

What you do with this after cooking is up to you. You can stick it together with a chocolate ganache if you like (I don't like chocolate ganache with chocolate cake... bit sicky... which is why I haven't done it) or with cream, or top it with cream and fruit, or sandwich together with raspberry jam or whatever, really. But it's quite interesting on its own.