Simple Sponge Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Icing

It’s “A”’s dad’s 60th birthday and we wanted to surprise him with a homemade birthday cake, since it’s a special occasion and a store-bought dessert just won’t do it. As expected, not all the ingredients came easily accessible so we had to substitute.

So here’s a very simple cake recipe made from ingredients you can get from anywhere in India and can be done in lesser than 30 minutes. The cake is light and fluffy while the chocolaty icing adds moisture to the cake making every bite decadent!

Ingredients

Cake
Courtesy from a good friend Anjali - thanks girl! (yes, you probably know her too)
1 cup of white flour (locally known as maida)
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of cream
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of baking powder
10 walnuts, crushed (optional)
Some butter for oiling the pan

Chocolate Fudge Icing
Handful of chocolates chunks (I like using dark chocolates but you can pretty much use any kind of chocolates – cooking chocolates, Ooty chocolates, milk or dark chocolate bars that you normally snack on, etc…)
2 tablespoons of cream
1 tablespoon butter

Cake Decoration (optional)
3 tablespoons instant oats and 1 tablespoon sugar (put in blender, set on high for 1 minute or until mixture becomes powder)
OR
3 tablespoons powder sugar (which we couldn’t find after looking in 5 different stores)

Directions

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Centigrade (or on a “high” setting, if you are using an oven that doesn’t tell you the temperature). Prepare cake pan (we used a 10-inch round pan) by rubbing butter, sprinkling with flour and tapping out extra.

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, cocoa powder and baking powder. In separate bowl, whisk eggs and then add cream and stir well until combined. Add wet ingredients into flour mixture, fold and stir until combined and smooth, scraping the sides, about 2 minutes.

Pour batter into pan. Bake for 20 minutes (or 15 minutes at “high” setting). Remove cake from pan and cool on rack or big plate.

While cake is baking, create a double boiler (don’t stress, to create a boiler, simply place a medium glass or porcelain bowl on a small pot of boiling water, on low fire. The bottom of the bowl shouldn’t touch the bottom of the pot.) Mix all icing ingredients in the bowl, stir until ingredients melt into chocolaty sauce. Your icing is ready!

Here’s the fun part; the decoration – slowly pour chocolate icing on the top of the cake and spread evenly, allowing access chocolate icing to flow down the sides of the cake. To finish, dust some cocoa powder on the top of the cake.

Now for a wow factor. On a piece of paper, cut out words like “Happy Birthday” or “This cake rocks!” to make a stencil. Place stencil on the cake, making sure the all surface of the stencil is in contact with the cake. Dust powder sugar or powder oats evenly on the stencil. Carefully remove stencil.


"A" carefully designed and carved this perfectly aligned stencil to decorate the cake.


Powder oats on stencils.


Yum!