Easy recipe for a simple, all-purpose chocolate cake
What's the connection between a little black dress, a good pair of blue jeans and a chocolate cake recipe? Like the importance of a good pair of jeans or a little black dress (okay, may be not) in the wardrobe, everyone needs a good, reliable chocolate cake recipe in their cooking repertoire. A choc
Ingredients
- 112 g plain flour (maida) (~1 cup minus 1 tbsp)
- 150 g jaggery powdered (~3/4 cup)
- 42 g cocoa powder (~1/2 cup)
- 3/4 tsp Baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 egg
- 125 ml milk (~1/2 cup)
- 60 ml vegetable oil (~1/4 cup)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 125 ml water boiling (may not need all of this).
Instructions
- Preheat the oven at 180C.
- Grease and line the bottom and sides of an 8" round cake tin with aluminium foil or parchment paper.
- Weigh out all the ingredients or measure them out and add everything to a large bowl except the boiling water. Mix with a wooden spoon for 3-4 minutes, until well combined.
- Add the boiling water to this mixture little by little with repeated stirring. The batter will get considerably thin. If you find it getting too watery, then no need to add all of the water.
- Scrape this batter into the greased and lined cake tin. Push some of the batter from the center to the sides so that it is a little indented in the center. This will ensure your cake rises uniformly and not doming up in the center.
- Place in the center rack of the oven and bake for around 25-35 minutes. After 25 minutes, remove the tin out and insert a skewer / dry spaghetti into the cake to see if it comes out clean. If not, bake for another 5-10 minutes until the cake is thoroughly baked.
- Remove from oven, cool for 10-15 minutes. Remove from the tin carefully and cool on a wire rack thoroughly before slicing.
Notes
Plain chocolate cake not fancy enough?
If you want to do a little bit extra for this cake like for an occasion, you can make an easy chocolate ganache by heating up 100 ml cream and 100g of plain chocolate bar broken into pieces.
Keep stirring with a wooden spatula on medium heat until glossy and chocolate is fully dissolved. Let this cool outside for 2 hours during which it will become thicker and spreadable. Once the cake has completely cooled, pour ganache all over the cake and smoothen out with a palette knife all around and on top of the cake.
You can fill this same batter into cupcake moulds and use the above ganache similarly to top the cupcakes. Add some colourful sprinkles on the top and you have a soft delicious cupcake that could even be better than store-bought ones!