Simplest Chocolate Cake and More!

Chocolate cake is all-time hot favorite for most of us... particularly the kids. Even the adults can turn to be a kid, when you offer a chocolate cake to them. Initially when I started baking, my most important primary intention of home baking was to bake a soft and moist chocolate cake, so that I can slip a piece of home-made chocolate cake into my kids' lunch-box or me and my husband, can enjoy the bite of homemade afternoon snacks while sipping in a cup of evening tea... being too much romantic! Huh!! But, may be this is the dream nurtured in the mind of many women - as they always want to be a good loving wife and a good caring mother...

So the first chocolate cake I tried was not a perfect one, for sure... may be I was too new to baking or the recipe was not a proper one... the outcome was not proper at all. But still we enjoyed the half-done type of chocolate cake, just because we all love chocolates and cannot even dream of wasting any chocolate products in kitchen garbage bins! 

Gradually after few more trial and error processes, I became a master of baking a chocolate cake. Nowadays even my extended family and my neighbors have tasted it and liked, too. Considering all these positive feedback, I can claim at least to be a master of chocolate cake!!

Now, the recipe!

Dry ingredients -

Flour  or maida - 1 cup 

Cocoa powder - 1/2 cup 

Sugar powder - 1 1/4 cup 

Baking powder - 1 3/4 teaspoon and

Soda-bi-carbonate - 1/4 teaspoon

Wet ingredients -

Eggs (medium/large) - 4 

White cooking oil - 3/4 cup 

Vanilla essence - 1 teaspoon 

And the process!

In a large bowl sift in all the dry ingredients together and using a wooden spatula, mix well. Done!

Take another large bowl - add eggs and sugar. Use the electric beater to beat this for quite some time, until the volume increases to 3-4 times and the sugar is smoothly blended into the egg.

Slowly pour oil into the mixture and continue beating at low speed. Add the vanilla essence and blend with the mix.

Now is the time to put your oven at preheat mode. For this cake, the required temperature is 180C - so set the preheating temperature as 180C. Also, keep the cake pan (preferably a 9" pan) prepared by oiling and dusting.

Sprinkle the dry mix in smaller quantity on top of the wet mix and slowly fold in, using the wooden spatula. Fold in means top-down movement of mixing. Continue this process of mixing until all dry ingredients is nicely blended and your batter is ready. 

Pour this gradually in your pan and set for baking at 180C for 30 mins. In my oven, this is the perfect setup for this cake. In case, it is not done, then you can bake it for another 5 mins at same temperature. Do the knife-test to check the doneness of the cake and allow to cool down to room temperature within the cake pan.

Remove from pan and serve with a dollop of chocolate or vanilla ice-cream. 

This is how it came out for me -

Last time when I baked this chocolate cake, I did something more to that. And that was a fresh cream icing...

How I did it? Hmmm... I'll share that in my next post... till then, happy baking!