Possibly the best chocolate cake ever!



Possibly the best chocolate cake recipe ever!
Dark choc icing with milk choc buttons, and Milk choc icing with white choc buttons 

To substantiate that claim... in my real life I manage a team of 10 technical IT analysts/developers (90% of the team is male). Every other month we have a team meeting, and every team meeting at least one person has "reason" they cannot attend (e.g dealing with major incidents/in the middle of an upgrade etc. etc.)

Last month I baked this cake and last month I had 100% attendance!! therefore I've concluded that the cake really must be something special or perhaps has magical powers!

You will need

For the cake

• 230g butter
• 230g caster sugar
• 210g self raising flour
• 30g cocoa
• 4 medium eggs

For the icing

• 100g butter
• 200g icing sugar
• 100g melted (value or cooking) chocolate (or 30g of cocoa and a splash of milk)

To decorate

Chocolate buttons (Tesco and Morrisons both do their own brand 3 packets for £1,  2 packets is just enough)

Or

Maltesers (This is a little extravagant as it would take 3 packets to do this properly. In the pic below I used 2 packets and it would have been better with 3)

 

Getting started with the cake

• Pre heat oven to 180C
• Grease 2 Victoria sponge tins
• Beat together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy and then slow begin adding the flour and eggs.

Next add the cocoa powder, mix some more and  then pour into your greased tins.

Allow your little monster(s) to lick the beaters!

Bake for 30 minutes


Let the cake cool completely before beginning to decorate, otherwise there is a danger the buttercream will begin to melt and slide off.

Icing and decorations

Break the chocolate up and place it in a heatproof bowl. Then microwave for a few seconds (stir and then put back in if necessary). Do this very slowly rather than risk burning it!

To start the icing, add the butter and icing sugar to a bowl. BEFORE you put a mixer in there (and send an icing sugar cloud across your kitchen), take a wooden spoon and slowly and gently mix the sugar and butter together until it looks a little like scrambled eggs.

Add the melted chocolate to your icing. (The first time I did this I really worried that the warm chocolate would melt the butter and it would all go wrong, but it didn't and everything was good!!)

Now mix with your electric mixer until light and fluffy.

You can then begin assembling and decorating your cake.

Place one cake on a plate, and cover the top with around a 3rd of the icing.

Place the other cake on top, and then use the remaining icing to cover the top and sides. It doesn't need to be thick on the side, just enough to hold the buttons on!

Finally begin the decoration, starting from the outside and working in and then down the sides.

Soon the cake will look amazing and also be light, fluffy and absolutely gorgeous to eat.

Yum yum yum. Eat up!

 

Here is the massive 3 tier malteser version I made for my team meeting

And here's what it looked like less than an hour later!