Or…

Soggy Chocolate Cake

This recipe (or a version of it) was my favourite chocolate cake growing up, and my mother’s go to recipe for birthdays and celebrations.

Unfortunately, when I asked my mother for the recipe, she couldn’t find the page… (the book had fallen apart) and it had been so long since she’d made it that she could only tell me the ingredients, and not the quantities. Shame, but I’m sure it will turn up!

I ended up adding in a few ingredients that weren’t in the original recipe, but it tasted similar enough (from memory!), and went down a treat with everyone.

My mother’s version was usually filled with whipped cream and smothered in a deliciously gooey melted chocolate caramel icing… I’m drooling just writing about it.

But, I made this cake for my nephew’s 4th birthday (wow, it’s been a year already!) so it was a green frosting for a Ben 10 cake.

The Ben 10 frosting was a simple vanilla flavour, but the green colour did inspire the mint frosting on the teacup cakes…

 

So, it has been a year since my nephew’s 3rd birthday Spiderman cake, the one that inspired me to start this blog, and boy have I learnt a lot! It’s been a busy year with a few kitchen meltdowns (which you won’t have heard about…) and two full days in the kitchen making my wedding cakes… two days that seriously tested the baker in me! But it’s been fun, and the urge to bake has not diminished, so you’ll certainly be hearing more from me this year.

Ok, ok, onto the cakes – I’m giving you the recipe for the teacup cakes, rather than the Ben 10 cake, but the cake batter was the same, and you could make a 2 layer 8 inch cake with the recipe below.

Chocolate Teacup Cupcakes

Yield:  around 8 Teacup Cakes (depending on size)

Ingredients

165ml prepared black coffee
55g (1/2 cup) cocoa powder
200g (1 1/2 cup) self-raising flour
7g (1 1/2tsp) bicarbonate of soda
3g (1/2 tsp) salt
305g (1 1/3 cup) caster sugar
2 small eggs
65g sour cream
80ml (1/3 cup) whole milk
160ml (2/3 cup) rice bran oil

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C/350° F/Gas Mark 4, and grease your teacups with butter – be sure your teacups are oven proof! It should say so on the bottom… If you don’t want to use teacups, just use a regular cupcake pan.

Make the coffee, and while the water is still hot, add in the cocoa powder. Stir until the cocoa is dissolved and there are no lumps remaining.

Sift the flour, bicarb soda and salt into a bowl and stir to combine.

In a separate bowl, add the sugar, eggs, sour cream, milk and oil, and beat until combined.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry mixture and beat again, then stir in the cocoa and coffee mix.

Pour the batter into your prepared teacups, leaving a third at the top, then bake for 25 minutes (40 minutes if making an 8 inch cake).

Fresh Mint Cooked Flour Frosting

Ingredients

20g fresh mint
30g (3 Tbsp) plain flour
180ml (3/4 cup) milk
175g (3/4 cup) white sugar
190g butter (soft, but still firm to the touch)

Method

Place the sugar and mint into a food processor and pulse until mixture is fine.

Add the milk and flour to a saucepan and whisk together so that there are no lumps remaining. Heat the milk and flour mixture, stirring continuously, until the mixture begins to thicken. Take off the heat and set aside to cool completely.

Beat the butter with the sugar and mint mixture, then add in the cooled flour mixture and beat until light and fluffy, and all sugar grains have dissolved.

Pipe (or dollop!) onto your teacup cakes.

 

Enjoy.. x