The Easy but Perfect Chocolate Cake

This is the cake that restored in me the faith that I can indeed bake. Before this cake, everything that I had attempted had flopped miserably and very literally. There was my first experiment that I cringe to even think about. A cake that called for vinegar and where I due to my very limited resources, instead of baking soda used baking powder and instead of coca powder used drinking chocolate powder. The result was more a pancake than cake. A very sour, mud coloured pancake.

There was also the incident where in doubling a recipe, my roommate from college U (who taught me to cook) and I also doubled the baking soda and somehow this made the cake we were baking for our other roomie Ant's birthday grow and grow and grow, like a volcano in my oven waiting to erupt. A triangular cake that was hard but which we could atleast pass off as a brownie. A tasty birthday brownie.

So my sister-in-law who is an awesome cook actually wrote down her favourite recipes into a little red book for my husband and me while we set up our kitchen here. It has became almost a bible for me and many of those recipes I have shared here, as well as new ones she emails me. They are fail proof and instant hits and so is this chocolate cake recipe.

This has now become my go-to chocolate cake recipe. I bake this beforehand, whenever I have people over and almost always get recipe requests. It has a rich decadent chocolate taste even though it does not call for butter or cream, and instead uses oil. The ingredients are pretty much always on hand and its very easy to make too-comes out perfect every time..

The taste is heavily influenced by the type of chocolate powder used, so make sure it's a good brand. I use the Ghiradelli brand though a dutch processed chocolate powder would be best.

Even though I have made this many many times now, we never seem to get tired of this tender, moist cake which is great on its own or with chocolate sauce or ice cream, and its all gone in a flash!

Recipe source: My sister-in-law

3/4 cup cocoa pwd (preferably dutch processed)

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp baking pwd

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp table salt

1 cup buttermilk ( I use half a cup of curd and half a cup of water)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 180 C

Lightly grease base and sides of a 23 cm deep round cake tin with oil

In a large bowl sift cocoa sugar flour baking pwd, baking soda and salt and combine.

In another bowl put the eggs, and all the other wet ingredients (except the water) and whisk

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk until half combined.

pour the boiling water and whisk till fully combined and the batter is smooth

Pour the batter into the prepared baking tin and place in oven for 40-45 mins until skewer inserted into the center of cake comes out clean

You could also pour the batter into prepared cupcake tins and bake for about 20-35 mins or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

( I also added 4 tsp of coffee pwd into the boiling water and some chopped toasted walnuts which I dusted with flour and stirred into the batter towards the end. Notice I also tried to use white chocolate bits which however just melted into the batter so that didn't really make a big difference unfortunately.)

Verdict: this cake is moist and fluffy and has come out perfect every time I've baked it. The second time after I have tried a recipe I'm back to my old tricks of substituting and adding random things. But in this case with the addition of coffee and nuts it was sensational. Would also like to try incorporating Kahlua or even orange extract sometime.

I don't know why but I like the idea of using oil to bake instead of butter. I think I'm quite obsessed with the idea that oil makes the cakes very moist and that it's healthier than butter. Also for making a recipe dairy free its very easy to just substitute the milk for soymilk or almond/rice milk and not have to worry about butter substitutes since there will always be a bottle of canola oil in my kitchen. Thankfully there are lots of food bloggers out there that fuel my obsession. For why else would someone make a red velvet cake with oil? See here for a wonderful recipe from smitten kitchen for red velvet cake that I just have to try.