Easy chocolate cake recipe?

250ml cake flour

250ml sugar

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

125ml vegetable oil

125ml cold water

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 eggs, seperated

Pinch of salt

Method:

Sift dry ingredients together. Beat oil, water and egg yolks together and add gradually to dry ingredients, beating well after each addition. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks and fold into mixture. Bake for about 35 - 40 mins at 180 degrees celcius.

Don't know if you needed a recipe for choc icing too but here goes -

Mix 125ml margarine / butter with 2 tablespoons cocoa powder and 250ml icing sugar until smooth.

I made this a couple of weeks ago and it was delicious - very rich though!

/recipes/ultimate-chocolate-cake

A Hitched favourite is the Nigella chocolate fudge cake, needs a fair few ingredients but takes minutes to make. And totally and utterly gorgeous!!

Sorry, to a non cook you've lost me already... plain or self raising, caster or granulated... ?

WSS.

Chocolate Fudge Cake (Nigella Lawson from Nigella Bites)


For the cake:
400g plain flour
250g golden caster sugar
100g light muscovado sugar
50g best quality cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
3 eggs
142ml/small tub sour cream
1 tbsp vanilla extract
175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
125ml corn oil
300ml chilled water

For the fudge icing:
175g dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids
250g unsalted butter, softened
275g icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.

Butter and line the bottom of two 20cm sandwich tins.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugars, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt. In another bowl or wide-necked measuring jug whisk together the eggs, sour cream and vanilla until blended.
Using a freestanding or handheld electric mixer, beat together the melted butter and corn oil until just blended (you’ll need another large bowl for this if using the hand whisk; the freestanding mixer comes with its own bowl), then beat in the water. Add the dry ingredients all at once and mix together on a slow speed.
Add the egg mixture, and mix again until everything is blended and then pour into the prepared tins. And actually, you could easily do this manually; I just like my toys and find the Kitchen Aid a comforting presence in itself.
Bake the cakes for 50-55 minutes, or until a cake-tester comes out clean. Cool the cakes in their tins on a wire rack for 15 minutes, and then turn the cakes out onto the rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, melt the chocolate in the microwave – 2-3 minutes on medium should do it – or in a bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water, and let cool slightly.
In another bowl, beat the butter until it's soft and creamy (again, I use the Kitchen Aid here) and then add the sieved icing sugar and beat again until everything's light and fluffy. I know sieving is a pain, the one job in the kitchen I really hate, but you have to do it or the icing will be unsoothingly lumpy. Then gently add the vanilla and chocolate and mix together until everything is glossy and smooth.

Sandwich the middle of the cake with about a quarter of the icing, and then ice the top and sides, too, spreading and smoothing with a rubber spatula.

? Sorry, i've made it so many times that I've just put it down out my head. It's plain flour and granulated sugar (although i've used castor sugar and also brown sugar before depending on what's in the cupboard and it makes no difference)

The Good Food recipe one is in my oven now - I felt compelled! Didn't have 75ml of buttermilk, so stuck in some semi skimmed instead ? Any real cooks out there want to tell me that this will make my oven explode?

Oh my go, run quik before it all blows up ?

Nah, it should be fie, for future ref. next time if you add a teaspoon of spirit vinegar or lemon juce to 1 cup of milk to make it curdle it will be an even closer substitute. HTH

ETA. Not that I think I'm a real cook but thought it might help?

It is kind of you - but it doesn't help. If my fridge doesn't have buttermilk, my cupboard sure as hell doesn't have lemons or spirit vinegar ? I did have some 2 days out of date cream and wondered about adding that ? Any danger of it blowing up may have been mitigated by me putting it on 20 degrees C too low for the first 45 mins. Waaaaaaaah - I wasn't cut out for this! If it comes out an unsolidified mess, it's going to be mashed up and topped with fruit, jelly an cream. Voila - trifle! ?

Wonderful - thanks all. the Nigella one has a few more ingrediants than I have here but the first one posted (sorry, can't see now who posted it) is one that I have all the ingrediants for so I will start making now.

? The temp shouldn't be *too* much of an issue, just let it cook a bit longer and stick a skewer (or piece of raw spaghetti) into the middle when you think it is done and if it comes out clean it's done. But then again trifle IS very yummy too, so enjoy either way!