June ABC challenge: chocolate birthday cake

It was my chocolate-loving friend's birthday, so in May I made her a chocolate cake.  There are several chocolate cake recipes on the GBBO website.  I ruled out one because it called for "cake margarine," whatever that is.  I compared chocolate quantities amongst the others and this had the most.  It also was the only one that didn't call for self-rising flour, so I didn't have to be hassled with working that out.  (Most called for additional rising agent anyway.)

I made a half recipe and used 5 3.5-inch cakelet tins, but the batter rose so much I wish I had used 6.  (I filled the tins about 2/3-3/4 full.)  I greased them all, but then dusted some with cocoa powder and some with flour to see if one looked better.  They both performed equally well.  The ones with cocoa were very dark (that would have been the Dutch cocoa) while the one with flour was dry cocoa-colored.  I'm not sure the darker color, which wasn't even noticeable at first, is worth the trouble of using cocoa.

I started out with Imperial volume measurements, having converted them from the original metric, but I tested them against the weights and they were way off, so I switched to metric.

Here's what I used:

For the cake:
1/4 cup unsalted butter
200g plain flour
45g Dutch cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
230g caster granulated sugar
1 1/2 medium eggs, at room temperature
150ml (5 ounces) full-fat milk
112ml (4 ounces) strong hot coffee (or 1/2 tablespoon instant coffee dissolved in 112ml hot water)

Heat the oven to 350°F.  Melt the butter and leave to cool.  Grease and flour (or line) baking tins.  Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl.  Add the sugar and mix together.  Break the eggs into the milk and whisk until thoroughly combined, then mix in the melted butter and hot coffee.  Make a well in the center of the flour mixture; pour the milk mixture into the well and stir everything together with a wooden spoon.  When smooth and thoroughly combined, pour the mixture into the tins about half way.  Bake for about 20-25 minutes until each is well risen, starting to shrink away from the sides of the tin, and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.  Run a knife around the inside of the tins to loosen the cakes.  Leave to firm up for 3 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool upside down with the tins loosely on top.

For the ganache:
2 ounces 56% dark (semi-sweet) chocolate, roughly chopped
2 ounces double whipping cream

Place the chocolate in a small bowl. Heat the cream gently until hot, then pour over the chocolate.  Leave for 5 minutes, then gently stir to make a smooth sauce.  Allow to cool until thickened, then drizzle over completely cooled cakes.

 

These cakes practically doubled in size while baking.  For the coffee, I used one of those singles tubes of Taster's Choice French roast, which was just slightly more than 1/2 tablespoon.  The ganache quantity was just enough to do three cakes--- definitely need more of that.

Conclusion:  The texture was really good, moist but firm.  The flavor could have been more decadent and I'm going to blame the Dutch cocoa powder.  It's not as potent as natural cocoa, and it was probably poor quality as well.  But overall I think a good chocolate cake recipe, and with chocolate chips added it would be a nice snack cake.

Recipes:  Benjamina's Winter Wonderland Cake for the cake and Steph's Raspberry Chocolate Fudge Cake for the ganache.  (Also consider Steph's Black Forest Chocolate Cake frosting recipe.)