A Simple Chocolate Cake (Bill Granger)

We have very strict house rules and one of them is... We don't have to have a birthday to eat a chocolate cake! - CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

Welcome to our house! A house that lives three chocoholics including me, the baking woman who love baking chocolate cakes and bakes for everybody.

As always, there is no reason needed to bake this very simple chocolate cake. All I need is my family to enjoy eating this cake. That's all!

This Bill Granger's chocolate cake recipe is so simple that I reckon that everyone can bake this cake. With sour cream in its chocolate icing, this cake recipe seems some-how similar to the Old-fashion Chocolate Cake (Nigella Lawson's recipe) that I have baked previously but I reckon that this recipe is much more straightforward and simpler. 

The simplest part of this recipe that I reckon is the chocolate icing which contains just two ingredients, chocolate and sour cream! To make this icing, all I need to do is to mix the melted chocolate and sour cream together... That's all! NO creaming step is required! Plus, with NO added sugar or golden syrup, this icing is NOT sweet at all. We kind of like it this way as it highlights the intense chocolate flavours of our good quality chocolate.

The next easiest part is to make the cake batter as all I need is to make sure that the butter is very softened and mix everything very slowly in an electric mixer. Having said that, I wouldn't say that this chocolate cake base recipe is fail-proof as I have yielded two different cakes with the same cake batter. Bizarre!??? Despite that both cakes were baked until a skewer inserted came out clean, only the slightly taller cake was fudgy in its center. I extended the baking of this cake for another 15 minutes and strangely, the cake remained having this fudgy texture.

I asked myself...
Have I mix the cake batter well enough?
Or does the little extra height of the taller cake create this fudgy center???

Nevertheless, both cakes are very moist despite their texture difference. The best part is the cake is actually very delicious with the wet fudgy center... Bizarre!??? I can never figure out why?

Whether bizzarre or not, simple or not, we love enjoying this moist and delicious cake...

A Very Simple Chocolate Cake

We are using cocoa powder by Valrhona, the Rolls Royce brand of all chocolate?!

A very simple recipe - just mix and bake!

Why? I can't explain...

Making the simple chocolate icing with just these two ingredients

Assembling the cake

See how moist this cake is!

Here's the recipe by Bill Granger 
(with my modification and notes in blue)

Serves 10-12

Cake
280g plain all flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
55g cocoa powder
(I used Valrhona Dutch processed ones)
220g caster sugar
250g very soft unsalted butter
4 eggs
170ml milk
No vanilla!? - I realised that and ok... I shall follow what the recipe says... no vanilla then!

I reckon both Valrhona and Callebaut cocoa powder are equally good but if budget permits, we prefer Valrhona ones with darker red colour and deeper intense flavours and I'm still using both at the same time.

Icing
300g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
(I used the Callebaut ones with 54% cocoa)
370g sour cream
(reduced to 300g)

To decorate
bright sweets or candy
candles
This is NOT a birthday cake and so NO candles and decorations are required! - LOL!

Preheat the oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan forced). Grease two 20 cm (8 inch) round cake tins and line with baking paper.

Sift the flour, baking powder, cocoa and sugar into a large bowl and stir together. Add the butter, eggs and milk. Mix with electric beaters on low speed for 1-2 mins or until smooth.

Spoon the mixture into the cake tins and bake for 25 mins, or until skewer inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean. Leave in the tins for 5 mins before turning out onto wire racks to cool.

To make icing, put the chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Heat the chocolate very slowly until just melted, being careful not to let the water boil or touch the bottom of the bowl. Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 15 mins. - Instead of using this method, I melt my chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl using a microwave with short bursts of low power and make sure that the chocolate is just melted.

Whisk the sour cream into the melted chocolate. - If the icing is too solid to mix, I microwave it with lowest power for multiple 5-10 secs until the icing is easy to mix.

Spread one-third of the icing over one cake. Sandwich the other cake on top. Spread the rest of the icing all over the cake. Decorate with sweets and candles (No sweets and candles!!!).

Happy Baking
Please support me and like me at Facebook...