The Best Chocolate Cake Recipe
If you are looking for a deliciously chocolaty chocolate cake this one is for you.
Ingredients
For the 6 inch cake
- 200 g Unsalted butter
- 200 g Plain chocolate - 70% cocoa
- 300 g Light soft Brown sugar
- 200 g Plain flour
- 190 ml Soured Cream
- 3 Eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract / flavouring
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
For the Chocolate Ganache
- 300 ml Double Cream
- 600 g Milk chocolate
For the Decoration
- Fruit of your choice (optional)
- 100 g Melted dark chocolate (optional)
- 100 ml double cream (optional)
Instructions
To make the cake
- First you will need to prepare your cake tins. You will need 2x 6 inch cakes tins. With a little butter on a piece of kitchen paper, run this around the inside of your tins. Then dust in some flour to stop your cake sticking. I like to place a small circle of parchment paper in the bottom of my cake tin.
- We then need to prepare all of our dry ingredients. Into a mixing bowl sift in your flour. To this add your light brown sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and give this a good mix up. Pop this to one side whilst you prepare the wet ingredients.
- Into a saucepan add your butter, along with your dark chocolate. Place this on a medium heat and melt it all down. Once melted leave that to one side to cool slightly.
- In another bowl add your soured cream together with your eggs and mix these up.
- Add your soured cream and egg mixture to your dry ingredients, along with the melted chocolate and butter. Give everything a good mix up using a wooden spoon or spatula, until all ingredients are completely combined.
- Transfer the mixture evenly between your 2 cake tins and place in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for around 45 minutes.
- To test your cakes are baked all the way through you can use a cocktail stick or skewer. Polk this into the center of your cakes and if it comes out clean, they are completely baked.
- Turn out your cakes onto a cooling rack to cool down.
Fill, stack and decorate your cake
- To make the ganache to fill and cover your cake, cut your milk chocolate into small prices and place in a mixing bowl.
- Place your cream into a saucepan and heat until boiling.
- Once boiling pour your cream over your chocolate and mix until all of the chocolate has melted. Set you ganache to the side until it has firmed up and is spreadable. (To see a detailed video on how to make chocolate ganache click here)
- Once cooled divide your cakes into 4 layers, making sure to level the top. Taking your chocolate ganache spread this between your layers. You then want to cover your cake with the chocolate ganache, over the top and around the sides. Smooth this around the cake with a cake smoother.
- To finish off the cake I used 100g of melted dark chocolate, spooning this over the top and using a piping bag to add some drips to the side. If you find your chocolate isn't very runny, you can add some boiling double cream in the same way you did for the ganache, but in a 1:1 ratio.
- You can then add fruit of your choice or use the cake to decorate to match the theme of your party.