Best Chocolate Cake ever

The BEST damn chocolate cake ever!

If you had to make a chocolate cake, make it this recipe over at Smitten Kitchen.

Seriously, do yourself a favour… make it NOW 😀 You will not be disappointed!

One of my dear friends, Hannah over at A Very Foodly Diary, invited my little family over for lunch… last year in June. My contribution was dessert 🙂 (I know, it’s taken me a year to post this recipe! Blasphemy!)

My sister had made this cake as per the original recipe, which is a double chocolate layer cake. It was delicious and she had put cherries in the layers and frosted it with a swiss meringue buttercream (if I recall correctly).

I wanted to give this cake a go but original recipe is too large, so I halved the recipe which worked out great!

Please note, I reduced the sugar significantly. Because I think 300g is still WAY too much sugar (also asking for diabetes!). Don’t reduce the sugar anymore than 190g, as the texture of the cake changes. I should know, I tried it. I took it down to 165g and the cake was drier and crumbly.

What’s in it?

43g 70% dark chocolate
3/4 cup hot brewed coffee
190g golden caster sugar
158g all-purpose flour
65g unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
2 scant teaspoons of organic ground cardamom
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp + 1/8 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp + 1/8 tsp fine sea salt
75g eggs (beat 2 eggs and measure out)
88g melted butter
178ml buttermilk (make this using whipping cream and vinegar)
1/2 tsp + 1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Let’s make it!

Firstly, preheat your oven to 150 deg celcius (conventional). Prepare your chosen baking pan with baking paper and butter. Put aside.

Chop chocolate into small meltable pieces and combine with hot coffee in a bowl. Let mixture stand, stirring occasionally, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

Sift together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, cardamom, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Using the thermomix, beat eggs until thickened slightly and lemon coloured, approx. 3 minutes on speed 3.5. Add in the butter, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to eggs, beating until combined well (speed 3 / 7 seconds).

Add flour and sugar mixture, mix on speed 4 until just combined. You may have to stop the thermo and use your spatula to make sure it’s all mixed in from the bottom of the bowl.

Pour batter in prepared pan and bake in middle of oven until a skewer comes out clean. I tested it at 50 minutes, I actually cannot remember how long I baked the cake for. Original recipe says 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes. As the recipe has been halved, I would check at the 50 minute mark and then check every 5 minutes thereafter if not ready.

Cool cake completely in pan. Once cooled, removed cake from the pan. When it is completely cool, ie. room temperature, wrap in plastic wrap if not using immediately. This cake can be made a day ahead.

Cardamom Vanilla Whipped Cream

500ml thickened cream
3 level teaspoons of light muscavado sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
1-2 drops of cardamom essential oil (we used two as the second drop escaped) – make sure the essential oil is food grade, I recommend doTERRA or Young Living essential oils

Garnish

Fresh pitted cherries

Combine cream ingredient together and whip until it’s a spreadable, creamy consistency. I would say soft peaks. You can do this by hand, or hand held beater, mixer or Thermomix. Up to you.

Putting it altogether!

Place the cake on a nice plate. Spread the luscious cream on top with a spatula, and scatter/pile fresh cherries on top the cream.

DEMOLISH NOW!