It’s been awhile since I’ve shared what I’ve been cooking. We’ve had lots of the usual food but now I’m doing a bit of additional cooking cause Miss K is at day care (or play care as she likes to call it) one day a week. Favourites for lunch so far include my mum’s pumpkin soup and impossible quiche cooked in muffin tins.
Chocolate is one of the things the littlies aren’t allowed to take with them to day care so weekends I like to cook treats for Miss K like Chocolate cake with fudge frosting (can’t remember where the original recipe is from, I scanned it from a recipe book)
500ml water
660g caster sugar
250g butter, chopped
35g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon bicarb
450g self raising flour
4 eggs, lightly beaten
Fudge icing
90g butter
80ml water
110g caster sugar
240g icing sugar
35g cocoa powder
Preheat your oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease & line a baking dish/cake tin*
Combine water, sugar, butter and combined sifted cocoa and bicarb in a medium saucepan; stir over heat, without boiling until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil; reduce heat; simmer 5 minutes. Cool to room temperature – which takes ages. Well it felt like ages and I ended up being impatient so mine was still warm.
Add flours and eggs to the mixture. Or if you’re me, do it the other way around. doesn’t seem to make a big difference. Mix until smooth and changed to a paler colour. Pour mixture into cake tin/baking dish.
Bake for about 50 minutes, yup 50 minutes maybe a little more if it’s still raw cake mix in the centre. Take out of the oven and leave it in the tin for 10 minutes. Guessing this lets it finish cooking. Who knows? Turn onto a cake rack to cool.
And here is where I learnt a valuable lesson. Cook the cake the night before. Not the night you want to eat it. Especially when you start cooking it at 7 at night – it will still be warm 2 hours later! When it’s cool (so in my case the next day) spread with fudge icing.
To make the fudge icing combine butter, water and caster sugar in a small saucepan; stir over heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolves. Sift icing sugar and cocoa into a small bowl then stir in the hot butter mixture.
Cover; refrigerate about 20 minutes or until icing thickens. Beat with a wooden spoon until spreadable. Second lesson learnt. If you make your cake of an evening don’t make your icing at the same time. It will b rock hard by the time your cake cools and you’ll need to let it come to room temperature so you can do anything with it – ie the next day. And you will be tempted just to give the icing a try – with a spoon – more than once. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
* I used a 12in square cake tin