ULTRA MOIST CHOCOLATE CAKE

ULTRA MOIST CHOCOLATE CAKE
Recipe tested and photo 1:  Adri Poultney
Photo 2:  Chevonne Candice Williams
FOOD LOVERS RECIPES
Do you ever just want a chocolate cake, so moist that it practically melts in your mouth? Well I finally found it, and my husband is addicted to it (and my banana bread)
½ cups milk
100 g (1/3 cup + 2 tablespoons approx) butter
¼ cup oil (I used sunflower oil)
½ cup cocao powder ( I used Hershey’s)
1 cup self raising flour (refer notes for substitute)
½ teaspoon baking soda (refer notes)
1 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar (250 g)
1 egg, beaten, room temp
5 ml vanilla essence (or essence to your taste)
Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350 – 375ºF, 10 mins before baking.
Heat the milk, butter, oil and coco powder ’till the butter melts. Let it cool to room temperature (btw, don’t get disappointed if you don’t get the dark brown colour at this stage, you will get it once the cake is baked). Add the flour, baking soda, sugar, beaten egg and essence to the cooled liquid ingredients. Beat well using an electric beater or hand whisk ’till it’s well combined.  You can either use it to make cupcakes or a cake. I made a 9 inch loaf and 10 standard size cupcakes with the above qty.
Bake in the preheated oven for 15 – 20 mins for the cupcake and 25 – 30 mins for the loaf cake. The baking time can vary depending on different ovens.
Notes:
For cupcakes – Line your cupcake tin with paper liners (I use 2 liners per cupcake) and pour 3 tablespoons of batter in each case. I’m referring to the standard size muffins here.
For cake – Grease your cake tin well and line with parchment or baking paper. Pour the batter.

For Ganache:
whipping cream, ½ cup
baking chocolate, ¾ cup (I usually use Hershey’s milk chocolate chips. You can also use Hershey’s semi sweet chocolate chips for this)
Place the baking chocolate or chocolate chips in a bowl. Heat the whipping cream on low flame ’till small bubbles start appearing around the edges. Pour the heated cream to the bowl with the chocolate. Let it rest for 5 mins. Whisk it, using a balloon whisk. This will give you a liquid consistency ganache. If you want to thicken the ganache for spreading, place the bowl on some ice and whip it. It will start thickening. Spread the ganache on the cooled cupcakes or cake. Enjoy!
Notes – This is an extremely moist cake, so I won’t suggest making a layered cake. You can store the cake (without ganache or icing) at room temp for 3 – 4 days in an air tight container. The original recipe calls for baking powder. But I’ve read somewhere that for chocolate cake, baking soda is better. The reason, baking soda will react with cocao powder and gives a darker colour to the cake. I used castor sugar for the recipe for easy blending of ingredients, however you can use regular sugar. You can serve this cake as a dessert along with a scoop of your fav ice cream.

Substitution for self raising flour – to get 1 cup self-raising flour, add 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder + ¼ teaspoon salt to 1 cup all purpose flour.

Note from Adri Poultney –  Just one thing to note, make SURE your liquid mix is cooled before adding the egg, because if it’s still too warm, the egg will split, and the whole cake ends up tasting like egg and my darling chef husband learnt this the hard way. This cake has never flopped for me, but he managed it!