Devilishly Good Chocolate Cake

My husband loves sponge cake.  Yes, boring old vanilla sponge cake.  I, on the other hand hate baking sponge cake.  It’s boring, tedious (sifting flour three times is just crazy) and only tastes half decent the day you bake it, by day two it’s a dry, stale, tasteless hot mess.  I see no point in baking sponge cake so I don’t.  Every other type of cake under the sun is up for consideration, sponge however is not. 

My refusal to bake sponge cake has led me to explore other ‘spongy’ (as my husband puts it) cake options to satisfy his culinary cravings.  Devilishly Good Chocolate Cake is my latest experiment in the ‘spongy’ without being a sponge cake arena and I am very pleased to report that once my husband and I caught a glimpse of the finished gorgeous, luscious, raspberry crowned, showstopper of a chocolate cake we were left asking sponge who?

This cake is a complete and utter celebration of chocolate.  It’s rich, dark, delicious and full of intensely dark cocoa.  Watching the food processor effortlessly prepare the thick, luscious, chocolate loaded batter was an exciting sight for both the lazy home cook and chocolate lover.  I am not sure what I love more, the amount of chocolate in this cake or the fact that this cake is prepared by placing all of the ingredients in a processor and blitzing.  Easy peasy.  No triple sifting sponge action here, just fully loaded chocolate satisfaction.

To me, it’s the shiny and oh so enticing icing on this cake that takes this chocolate baby to devilishly delicious heights.  The icing consists of an entire bar of dark chocolate, melted of course, then drizzled through a mixture made up of confectioners’ sugar and butter.  The luscious icing both tops and sandwiches together the two cakes, meaning maximum icing to cake ratio per slice.  The final flourish to this chocolate mountain is an adornment of fresh raspberries that add such a beautiful hue of colour to the cake.  This Devilishly Good Chocolate Cake is in fact rather heavenly.  Enjoy K x

Devilishly Good Chocolate Cake

Adapted from Australian Good Food Magazine

INGREDIENTS

1 ½ cups self raising flour

1 ¼ cups firmly packed brown sugar

½ cup cocoa

1 ½ tsp baking powder

250g unsalted butter

4 eggs

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

75g dark chocolate, melted

Icing:

200g unsalted butter, at room temperature

200g pure icing sugar

200g dark chocolate, melted

Fresh raspberries and whipped cream to serve.

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180°C or 160°C fan.  Grease and line two 20cm cake pans.

Place flour, brown sugar, cocoa, baking powder, butter, eggs, vanilla and melted chocolate in a food processor and process until smooth.  If batter is a little stiff, add 2-3 tbsp water and process again.  Divide mixture between prepared pans, smoothing surface with spatula.  Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  Cool cakes in pans for 5 minutes, the turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make icing, place butter and icing sugar in a food processor and process until combined.  Add melted chocolate and process until combined.  Sandwich together layers of cake with half the icing, the top with remaining icing.  Top with fresh raspberries and serve with whipped cream.