At a time when I should ideally be packing as we are shifting soon, I find that I am baking a lot more than I usually do. One birthday cake order led to another and this was the second one.

I have done only a handful of orders till now. But I am learning that the more I do, the more I love this. The baking part, the decorating part, the clicking part…everything. It unwinds me like nothing else does.

More than anything, it stops me from gulping down the cake. Yeah, I am THAT bad. There is too much love for anything sweet.

Now I wish I had started taking orders earlier itself…sigh..

This cake has eggs and was a real soft cake. I didn’t even consider adding syrup to moisten the cake. I was worried the cake will break if I do that! It’s taken from the ever-reliable Joy of Baking site. Its the Simple Chocolate Cake recipe from there.

Ingredients:

Dry ingredients:

• 2 cups sugar (400 gms)
• 1 3/4 cups plain flour (~250 gms)
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder (75 gms)
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

Wet ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup warm water + 1 tsp instant coffee powder
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1.5 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Gather your ingredients and heat the oven to 180C. Grease and line two 9 inch pans with parchment paper. I wanted a tier cake, so I used a 9″ and a 6″ pan.
2. In a big bowl, whisk all the dry ingredients together (flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda, salt).
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs first. Then add the milk, oil, vanilla and weak coffee.
4. Mix the dry ingredients and the wet together using a spoon or whisk. Its better to do this in 2-3 shots. The batter will be very thin.
5. Divide the batter between the greased and lined pans.
6. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer comes free of crumbs when inserted in the middle of the cake.
7. Once its baked fully, take off the oven and let it rest on a wire rack for 10 minutes in the pan itself. Slowly and carefully, remove the cake from the pan and let it cool completely in a wire rack, about 3 hours. At this stage, it can be cling wrapped and stored in the freezer for a later date. I always bake a day before and freeze the cakes.
8. Once the cake is fully cooled, you can use this easy chocolate icing recipe to frost it. Final decoration for this cake was using ganache, sprinkles and gems.