oh-so-easy chocolate cake

This has got to be the easiest cake ever.  In fact so effortless I’ve refrained from posting about it – quite frankly – because it felt like cheating.  But if I’m honest it’s been the base of zillions of cupcakes, countless birthday cakes and even a couple of weddings!  Aieeyah – the secrets out.  It really is as easy as dry ingredients, meet wet – and as they say, the rest is history.

At its simplest it can be baked in a sheet pan with a quick glaze and cut into squares for that forgotten last minute bake sale.  Works equally well for quickie kids birthday cupcakes, multicoloured nonpareils are a childs best friend don’t you know! That said however,  as the batter is in fact a liquid, filling cupcakes pans can be slightly more time consuming – though I’ve found one of these comes in pretty handy.  And at it best, it can be dressed up to the nines, as I’m doing today, in a gorgeous layer cake, filled and topped with decadent ganache!

Apologies if this has been your go-to cake forever (it has been mine) but if you’re new to all this, add this to your repertoire.  Its dark, moist, surprisingly choclately, light but almost fudgy and obviously straightforward and functional.  Definitely one for your arsenal!

‘nuff said.

Oh-So-Easy Chocolate Cake

a.k.a Hersheys Chocolate cake

This recipe makes one batch – ie. 2 X 9″ round cake pans or approx 24 large cupcakes –                     I doubled the recipe to fill 4 X 10″ round cake pans

• 2 cups sugar
• 1-3/4 cups plain flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa – I usually use Hersheys, but have also used Cadburys and even Valrhona!
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2  eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F – Prepare 2 X 10″ inch round baking pans w/ grease proof paper.

• Sift the dry ingredients, sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt, into a bowl and set aside.  Mix wet ingredients, milk, oil, eggs and vanilla extract, together.

• Pour wet ingredients onto onto dry and mix on medium speed in stand mixer for 2 minutes.  Put the kettle on.  Add one cup of boiling water and stir to incorporate.

• Pour into prepared cake pans and bake for approx. 30 to 35 mins (thirty to thirty five)

• Cakes should be well risen and a cake tester should come out clean.

• Cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then carefully turn out onto a cooling rack.

•  Frost and/or decorate as you wish.  I used white chocolate crème fraîche ganache to fill and dark chocolate crème fraîche ganache to frost.

19 Jun This entry was published on June 19, 2013 at 9:15 pm. It’s filed under birthday, cake, chocolate, ganache and tagged birthday, chocolate, chocolate cake, chocolate ganache, dessert, easy, food, hersheys chocolate cake, hong kong, kids, layer cake, simple, white chocolate ganache. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.