Christmas Chocolate Cake

Hello

안녕하세요

(Annyeonghaseyo)

こんにちは

(Konnichiwa)

你好

(Ni Hao)

Sometimes you need a cake as your main dessert and centrepiece at Christmas, so I went on the hunt to find the perfect recipe and came across this cake from Jane's Patisserie.

Let's get baking!

Ingredients:

Cake:

225g dark chocolate

225g unsalted butter

1 tbsp instant coffee granules

175g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

200g golden caster sugar

200g light brown sugar

4 medium eggs

75ml buttermilk

Chocolate Frosting:

200g unsalted butter

400g icing sugar

50g cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla extract

100ml evaporated milk

Decorations:

3 packets matchmakers

Christmas sweet/ sprinkles

For the cake, start off by pre-heating your oven 160C/140C Fan/Gas Mark 3.

Line and grease 2 20cm cake tins and pop to one side for later.

In a bain-marie melt the dark chocolate and butter together.

Pour the coffee granules into 125ml of boiling water and mix.

Add the coffee to the the chocolate mixture and stir well until smooth.

In a separate large bowl ad the plain flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, golden caster sugar and light brown sugar and mix well so all the ingredients are mixed well together.

Mix the eggs with the buttermilk.

Add both wet mixtures to the dry ingredients and stir together, try not to over mix, it should be thick but runny with no flour lumps.

Pour the mixture evenly into your prepared cake tins and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes.

Once baked leave to cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

To make the frosting, beat the butter with an electric mixer, until it's smooth and supple.

Gradually add the icing sugar and cocoa powder alternatively with the condensed milk until all is incorporated.

Add in the vanilla essence.

Add one of your sponges to a plate or cake board and slather on some of the frosting. Add on the second sponge, and slather on some more of the frosting.

With the rest of the frosting, cover the sides of the cakes evenly.

Add the matchmakers around the edge next to each other. You need to work quick with this to get them to stick.

Once the Matchmakers are covering the sides, use ribbon to keep the cake in place and help it set.

Decorate the top with some Christmas sweets/sprinkles.

The flavours in this cake are delicious, sadly my frosting was runnier that I intended and it became a messy bake as I was assembling it all together. My Matchmakers kept falling down and I did start getting a little frustrated but I'm glad I got it all done as it was delicious.

Minus the messy assembling, the cake itself is really easy to make. I'm not in a rush to make it again, but if I did I think I'd miss out the decoration and have it just a chocolate cake as the flavours are too good to not make again.

If you want to make this yourself an want to follow the original recipe, then you can head to the Jane's Patisserie Christmas Chocolate Cake recipe page.

See you soon!

안녕

(Annyeong)

さようなら

(Sayonara)

再见

(ZaiJian)

Bye