Chocolate Cake – A Toy Show Treat!

It’s that time of year again! Time when children all over Ireland are allowed to stay up late, sat down in front of the television to watch the Late Late Toy Show on RTE1 and make those final adjustments to their letters to Santa (just incase they’ve forgotten something!)

I’ve been listening to the build up to the Toy Show today on the radio and hearing a lot about people going out and buying goodies to munch on while they are watching the show, so much so that we decided that we need something nice to eat too.

So, we had a quick flick through the cookbooks and came across this recipe for chocolate cake in Rachel Allen’s Bake book.  Chocolate Cake.  A perfect Toy Show treat!

Ingredients:

125g dark chocolate

2 tbsp milk

150g butter, softened

150g caster sugar

3 eggs

200g plain flour

1 tbsp good quality cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the chocolate butter icing:

75g butter, softened

1 tbsp cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

175g icing sugar

1 tbsp good quality cocoa powder

Plus: two 8″ sandwich tins

Method:

Preheat oven to 180ºc. Butter and flour the sides of the sandwich tins and line the bases with greaseproof paper.

Place the chocolate and the milk in a bowl sitting over a saucepan of gently simmering water and heat until the chocolate has melted.

Beat the butter until very soft and add the caster sugar.  Continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. 

Beat in the eggs one at a time then fold in the melted chocolate.  Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and gently fold into the mix.

Divide the mixture between two sandwich tins and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.  Remove cakes from the oven and allow to sit for a few minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool.

While the cakes are cooling, beat the butter, cream and vanilla extract until very soft, then gradually sift in the icing sugar and cocoa powder, beating all the time until it is all added.

Once the cakes are cool, sandwich together with a layer of the butter icing.

I found that the ingredients for the butter icing made an awful lot, so  I spread a thin layer on the top of the cake and the kids popped a few chocolate buttons around the edge (Ace of Cakes we most definitely are not!)