Totally Chocolate – Chocolate Birthday Cake

I made this superb cake for my niece's birthday. It is the most gorgeous cake I have ever made! Sorry, I don't have the picture right now. Will post it later.

Ingredients

1. All purpose flour – 225 gm

2. Caster Sugar – 225 gm

3. Butter/Vegetable Shortening – 225 gm

4. Eggs – 4

5. Double Action Baking soda/powder – 1 tspn

6. Vanilla Essence – 2 tspns

7. Chocolate Liquor – 2 tspns

8. Dark Cocoa Powder – 2 tbspns (30 gm)

9. Dark Chocolate chips or Dark Chocolate chopped into small pieces – 75 gm

10. unsalted butter – 150 gm

11. Icing Sugar – 50 gm

12. Whipping Cream/Double Cream – 1 cup

13. Milk – 2 tbspns

Procedure:

Preheat your oven to 200C

1. In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients and keep aside.

2. In another mixing bowl, whisk the butter and sugar till a little pale and then add in the eggs one by one.

3. Add in the vanilla essence and liquor

4. Add the flour mixture little by little until everything is combined.

5. Add milk if you feel the batter is a little lumpy. For this cake, the batter has got to be between lumpy and loose. So, too lumpy a batter may give you a hard cake.

6. Now put all the batter in your cake tin and bake for 25-30 min, until a cake tester comes out clean

7. After the cake cools down completely, turn it out of the tin, and cut it horizontally into two sandwiches.

Icing:

1. Melt the chocolate in a bowl, on a bowl of boiling water.

2. Kepp aside to cool

3. Next put the soft butter in a bowl and add the icing sugar to it.

4. Whisk till the butter-sugar mixture is pale

5. Add in the melted chocolate and mix well. Whisk again, if you like.

6. Now start by icing the bottom sandwich part of the cake. Stay around the centre and slowly spread towards the edges.

7. Then place the top part of the sandwich and start icing on top.

8. Ice the sides too

9. Decorate with blobs of cream (and cherries)

Serve cold.. !!