I baked a cake

I never bake cakes.  Just not overly interested in eating them to start with, let alone making them.  So I don't have any go-to recipes.

But I decided we should have one for Neil's 40th.

So it was either raid the books, or try the internet.  I tried one book first, but it wanted complicated things like baking powder and baking soda, and while I think I have them, I'm always a little scared of them because I don't know the difference, and am worried about using the wrong thing.

So internet to the rescue!

In the end I used this recipe - http://www.kidspot.com.au/kitchen/recipes/easy-chocolate-cake-1971

  • 1 cup (150g) self-raising flour, sifted
  • 1/3 cup (50g) cocoa, sifted
  • 1 cup (220g) caster sugar
  • 1/3 cup (80g) butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup (125ml) milk
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Chocolate cake ingredients

  • 1. Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Grease and flour or line a 24cm cake tin and set aside.
  • 2. Place all ingredients into a bowl and using a mixer and mix on high for 4 minutes.
  • 3. Pour into cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly touched in the centre.

I've cooked cakes in the dim dark past, and had greased tins before, but never thought to lightly dust in flour.  So that was something new for me.

Surprisingly, the cake actually worked!  It might have been a *teeny* bit dry, so I'd go towards the 35 minutes end next time.

Chocolate cake

The icing on the other hand I didn't even consult a recipe for (actually I lie - I did - but only for approx measurement of cocoa, and from there got the idea to use milk instead of water).  Point is, I could probably make icing in my sleep, I did it so often growing up (where we used to make lemon icing to top mum's peanut slice every week or so).  So it was about that much icing sugar (which, incidentally was inherited from my nana, with a best before date of 1997 - shh! don't tell anyone!), a spoon of cocoa powder, a teeny bit of butter, and milk - added in super small amounts at a time so as not to drown the icing.

Tada!

Chocolate cake

Then I piped a message to Neil using the icing from the gingerbread kits from a couple of years ago.