Deep Dark Chocolate Cake
recipe from Shirley O Corriher’s book ‘Bakewise’
This is a dark moist cake, looks good with Italian Meringue. This cake can stick to the pan so line and spray well. Shirley notes: Dutch process cocoa and baking soda make the chocolate so alkaline that the cake is almost black (but any cocoa works well). Adding boiling water to cocoa enhances its flavours. This cake is extremely over-leavened and would be sunken in the centre, but adding boiling water to the soda and cocoa causes the soda to react and give off a lot of carbon dioxide, which reduces the leavening and prevents sinking. I always bake this in a sheet and stack for a celebration cake. The mix makes I layer of a 12” round. Frances Dalton-Hayward
Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF)
2 1/3 cups white sugar
¾ tsp salt
¾ cup Dutch process cocoa powder (or any brand you normally use)
1 tsp Baking soda
1 cup water, boiling
Stir these together in a heavy saucepan. While stirring add 1 cup of boiling water gradually. It will bubble at first then get dark and thicken, stir briskly then place on the heat and bring back to the boil. Then turn off the heat and leave to stand on the element for at least 10 minutes – while you prepare the rest of the cake batter.
Prepare cake pans lining and spraying: either a 12” round, a 33 x 23 x 5 cm sponge roll pan or similar, or two 23 x 5 cm round pans.
¾ oil (canola, rice bran, I use extra virgin olive oil)
2 tspn pure vanilla extract
1 ¾ cup high grade white flour - spooned & levelled
4 large egg yolks or 2 large whole eggs Shirley like moist cakes so replaces whites with yolks, F
plus 2 large eggs yes that does mean a total of at least 4 large eggs!
¼ cup buttermilk (make your own by adding ½ tsp white vinegar to ¼ cup milk)
By the time you have assemble these your cocoa mixture should still be warm, pour it into the mixing bowl of a stand mixer. Add the oil and vanilla essence and beat on low speed for about 10 seconds. On low speed, beat the flour into the batter and then, with a minimum of beating, beat in the egg yolks, whole eggs and buttermilk. This is a thin batter. Pour into prepared cake pan/s. Place in oven rack just below the middle or place on stone[1] and bake until the centre feels springy to the touch, about 25 mins for round layers or 35 mins for sheet cake – may take longer. Cool in pan for at least 10 mins before cooling on rack. This cake keeps well covered in butter cream and fondant without refrigeration but in cool dry cupboard.
[1] Shirley says in her Bakewise book, “…a baking stone placed on a lower shelf and well preheated will give you fast, even heat from the bottom and let you keep your baked goods away from the hot top of the oven. Place the stone on a shelf in the lower third of the oven about 10cm (4”) from the floor then preheat 30-45 mins. Then place pan of batter directly on stone, which holds the heat and in spite of the oven temperature going up and down a little, the stone stays at the set temperature.”
I have a large slab of granite (try a pizza stone) on the lower rack for all cakes, breads, scones etc which is most successful. Only biscuits or cupcakes are cooked on the middle rack but I do leave the stone in for all my baking, just don’t let cold water get on it while it’s hot and it does require pre-heating. I give it one hour if I am baking my bread on it so it reaches 220ºC when I put in the loaf.
