That chocolate cake

Everyone has their 'favourite' chocolate cake. It's either cake 'from that corner shop' or 'from that amazing book' or 'this one I got from a blog' or...you get the idea. For me, this cake... this cake falls into one of those. But it falls into a category of chocolate cakes that I have (yes, I have categories to -I'll tell you about it sometime - but I hope it's normal to have such categories? ). There is, of course, no shortage of chocolate recipes going around, seriously... but then, I have to give my views about chocolate cake. Obviously.

I tried searching for the origins of chocolate cake. I am sure a certain book will have the real story, but till I get a look into that, here's what I found. Food Timeline says that the earliest chocolate cakes were yellow cakes served with a chocolate drink or yellow cakes with a chocolate icing.

This recipe is probably what I grew up on. I would know better, if I had paid attention when my mom used to make it, but I was more interested in the eating part of it. Wikipedia has listed (some of) the different types of chocolate cakes!

While on the road one day, I had this sudden urge to make a chocolate cake. Yes, I know, waiting in the long lines at a signal may not be the place to think of chocolate cake, but can you help it? Up until now, I have made several chocolate cakes, but I wanted a cake that I could eat while working and not have my hands messy with butter, I wanted something that would be the after dinner sweet. I wanted something that was not fancy. I wanted it to be the perfect, home style, from my memories cake.

This cake has one specific direction. The chilled water. I am not sure what that does really, but I am inclined to say its the texture and the moistness that develops. Because this cake might seem to be dry to you on the day you bake it. But trust me, leave it in a container overnight (once it has completely cooled) and then try it the next day. It becomes incredibly moist, soft and utterly delicious. It turns out even better after it is kept for another day, but that that need not always happen. When there's chocolate cake, you want to eat it. You don't want to wait... do you? And if you serve it with a good heap of vanilla ice cream... well then, you many not have any cake left after two days.


Chocolate loaf
(My Mom gave me the recipe, which was given to her by her friend)

I used granulated sugar, but if all you have is caster sugar, please use that. Although I made it into a loaf cake, you can certainly bake it in a round cake pan if you want.
You will need:

2 ¼  cups plain flour
2⁄3 [Two-third] cup Cocoa
½  tsp baking powder
½  tsp baking soda
½ tsp instant coffee
1 cup soft butter
2 cups caster sugar
3 Eggs
1 1/3 cups water - chilled
1 tsp Vanilla essence

To make the Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degree Celsius. In a bowl, add the butter and the sugar, and cream the two together for about 5 minutes until it is light.

 

2. To the creamed mixture add the eggs one by one and beat for about 2 minutes. Then add the vanilla essence.

 3. Sift into this, the flour, cocoa, coffee, baking powder and baking soda. Combine it gently till you get a smooth batter.

4. Add the chilled water to the batter and mix again. Fold the batter slowly, just till all of the water is incorporated.

5. To a lined loaf (or cake tin), Pour the chocolate cake batter. Bake for  about 20 minutes or until the cake has risen and a cake tester comes out clean.