Chocolate Cake
Store-cupboard Chocolate Cake! Who loves chocolate cake? Everyone yes? Well, a little known secret… but not me! I could never understand why people were so crazy about it! Chocolate yes! Cake that is chocolate no! Then, I started making it for birthdays and other special occasions and you know what? Yes, you guessed it! I was wrong!
Variations
I realised that I must have always been eating the wrong type of chocolate cake! There is sticky (only eat a small slice) chocolate fudge cake which is better served hot with cream or ice-cream. I could picture bakery windows where there was layer upon layer of chocolate cake bound with creamy chocolate frosting. I had munched on a range of rich virtually black chocolate cakes to the pale almost beige coloured chocolate cakes. Give me a coffee cake (this is a cake flavoured with coffee, not a cake you eat with coffee) any day! 🙂
A Cake for everyone
This chocolate cake can be what you make it! This recipe gives you a blank canvas to finish as you wish! Leave the cake plain as we did. Slice the cake into layers and fill it with fresh cream, or buttercream – vanilla or chocolate flavour. You can completely cover this cake with icing and decorate with sweets, chocolates or biscuits (cookies). You could add some fresh fruit – raspberries go great with chocolate, so do cherries, strawberries, or even mango and banana. If it’s your thing, you could try sandwiching your cake with peanut butter or even almond butter.
Store-cupboard Ingredients
We have tried to make this recipe as easy as possible, using ingredients most people have in their store-cupboard (or pantry)! However, there are some basics which you need such as flour, sugar and oil but these are interchangeable. If you follow a gluten-free diet, use your favourite gluten-free flour blend. If you are low on plain flour, you can use self-raising and omit the baking powder. You could also make oat flour to make your plain flour go further by mixing half and half.
Sugar can be any that you have. Regular white granulated sugar is fine for this cake, but caster, brown or even coconut sugar would still make this delicious!
We have stated olive oil in the recipe, but any neutral flavoured liquid oil would suffice – vegetable, sunflower or olive. You will notice there is water in this cake!
Water I said! Yes, we are not crazy, water-cake is actually a thing! You can use all water, or mix it with some of your favourite milk. You could even try half orange juice if chocolate-orange cake is your thing (I want to make that now)!
Cake Flavourings
Obviously a chocolate cake wouldn’t be very chocolatey without some form of chocolate and to make this easier (and so you can save your chocolate for eating) we have used cocoa powder. Cocoa powders vary in flavour dramatically and tend to lose their flavour once open. If you have regular cocoa powder that is great, if you have raw cacao powder, adjust the amount by half to prevent the flavour being overpowering. You will see this recipe has a spoonful of coffee granules included. Coffee enhances the flavour of the chocolate and using the coffee in this way will not make your cake taste of coffee! If vanilla is something you don’t use, no worries – this just gives an extra rich flavour to your cake.
Let’s Bake!
The recipe itself is quite simple! Mix the powdered ingredients. Mix the liquid ingredients. Whisk wet into dry. Pour into a tin. bake in a pre-heated oven. Ta-da! You will have yourself one delicious ready to eat cake!
A plain chocolate cake used as a blank canvas to finish as you wish.
- 375 g plain flour
- 7 teaspoons baking powder (check your own for quantities per 100g flour)
- 4 tablespoons cocoa powder (use 1.5-2 if raw cacao powder)
- pinch of salt
- 240 g sugar
- 375 ml warm water
- 85 ml olive oil
- 1 teaspoon coffee granules
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
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Mix the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, salt and sugar together.
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In a jug add the water, oil, coffee and vanilla – mix until the coffee dissolves.
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Whisk the liquid into the dry ingredients ensuring all lumps are gone.
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Pour the batter into a lined or greased cake tin. Cook at Gas Mark 4 for 40-50 minutes. When the cake is done, a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake should come out clean.
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Allow the cake to cool in the tin before removing.
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Enjoy!
Sharing
This store-cupboard cake was inspired by recent recipes from The Happy Pear and The Petite Cook. I’m sharing this over at Angie’s Fiesta Friday this week, co-hosted by Diann @ Of Goats and Greens and Liz @ Spades, Spatulas & Spoons
If you love this cake and make your own version, please share your photos and link back to us @LifeDietHealth or using #LifeDietHealth Feel free to Pin this for later, or re-tweet and follow us on Pinterest and Twitter too!
Drop us a line or two in the comments… how would you serve your cake?
Speak soon
Laurena x