Making: Chocolate Cake
I tried, tested and liked this chocolate cake recipe. And so I made this for Vai’s birthday cake the other day.
If you’d like to test this one too yourself, here’s the recipe.
Hope you enjoy it!
Ingredients
250 g cake flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup (69 g) unsweetened cocoa
380 g sugar
170 ml vegetable oil
240 ml hot coffee
240 ml milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1. Preheat the oven to 180 deg Celsius
2. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa and sugar in a large mixing bowl
3. Add the hot coffee, oil and milk and mix it for about 2 minutes
4. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the eggs and vanilla. Beat for 2 more minutes. The batter will be quite ‘runny’
5. Pour batter in prepared pans and bake for approx. 30 minutes. It’s ready when you poke with a skewer and it comes out clean
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Notes:
– You can’t taste the coffee at all, btw. It’s just supposed to simply ‘heighten the flavour’ (Anyway, I used very little coffee powder for my cakes)
– The oil is supposed to keep the cake soft and moist, even when you’ve just taken it out of the fridge.
This btw, was the reason why I chose to test out this recipe. You see, Vai’s birthday celebration was on a Sunday, and because we stayed at a Hotel the night before, I needed to bake it on Friday (2 days in advance), keep it tightly wrapped in the fridge, bring it out when I reached home from the hotel (ie. at 2.45pm!), get it covered in fondant and decorated in 90 mins, and leave for church.
[I’ll write a blog post on Vai’s birthday cake preparations soon!]
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Anyway.
I thought the cake was a little ‘porous’, ie. crumbles rather easily. Now, if you know the reason WHY, or HOW to make it ‘more dense’, please share with me! I’d love to know and learn from you!
Thanks all! Happy experimenting!
3 Comments »
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Sharing with you MORE tips from Raena:
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Crumbly cake could be due to one of the following:
1. mixture may have been too dry – which I doubt cos you have quite a fair bit of liquid ingredients. But too much baking soda/powder also creates a lot of “air pockets” in the cake by making it rise, hence making less of the cake sticking to each other making it crumbly
2. instead of using veg oil, use butter. veg oil tends to make it lighter/fluffier and most of the time crumblier than using butter.
3. not enough egg white – egg white makes the cake a little harder/rubberier/springier
4. beating it too long and too fast. (happened to me once..high speed and long created more bubbles in my batter and i got an airy/crumbly cake)
Thanks Raena! 😀
Hi Karen,
Thanks for the tips and the info! Really need all this as I’m a total newbie when it comes to baking! 😀
And cinnamon rolls … yummm, will try your recipe!! Thanks!
This is the recipe I use all the time for chocolate cake and there are no leftovers when I serve it at a party. http://www.storyofbing.com/?p=3338
It looks similar to the recipe you used, except that instead of a cup of coffee, mine used a cup of water. So I’m guessing if you want to cut the caffeine in the cake, you can replace coffee with water too.
To make the cake dense, try using butter instead of vegetable oil. Try using about 250g of butter instead of 170ml veg oil. And check your cake at 20 or 25 mins (instead of 30mins) with a satay stick or knife in the centre, it’s done if it comes out clean. Overbaking a cake also makes it crumbly.
Cool the cake with a clean kitchen cloth covering it. This way helps to keep all the moisture in the cake.
Good luck, Leonny and congrats on the new oven! Make cinnamon rolls next! I make a large batch and freeze some. Kids LOVE them, especially when I serve them warm with lots of sauce for breakfast – http://www.storyofbing.com/?p=4510