Rich Chocolate cake

It's Monday already...mmmmm. Weekend has been fun, first me n Sue celebrated Djen's birthday, not that kind of fancy celebration tho but cosy enough for the three of us ..... Dear sis Djen is like a sister to both of us and she would consult either one of us for any kind of advises when she needs any.

So for her birthday I decided to try one an old recipe that I found in one of mum's old magazines. So far, I've tried a few chocolate cake recipes but I can't decide any to be my favourite yet. The least of course is the one using vegetable oil instead of butter, ..personally I prefer a fruitless cake to use butter instead of oil...I would only eat a small piece cos I just couldn't accept chocolate cake with oil in it. I would go ewewewe all over.

Ok back to Djen's birthday cake, I did a simple decoration only.  Am no professional when it comes to that but I used to watch mum did all the buttercream icing when I was little. Those days there were no bakery selling birthday cakes etc. So me and the rest of my siblings gets a home-made fruitcake with buttercream icing. Mum just loved her fruitcake so without fail everyone of us gets a fruitcake birthday for our birthday.  And like any other kids at that young age I simply hate fruitcakes but I just love to lick the buttercream icing off the cake...LOL...those were the days!!!!.

I braved myself to do it myself. And here's the result,..smoochy and smudgy all over but Djen and Sue loved it.  

Rich Chocolate Cake

See the smudges....obviously no pro at work tapi Djen tetap madah nyaman..boleh mukak bakery bila pencen kelak ...kata Djen lah..

A slice of the cake, apologies for the poor quality of picture, ambik dari hp jak plus the lighting at Pizza Ria was quite dark...

A small gift from me ...Djen loves red so I thought that this bracelet would be nice for her...almaklumlah kan orang itu tengah hangat dilamun cinta kan?....oo sulu owh...ngeeeeeeee.....

Djen showing off the card and gift I gave her.  Ngegeh nuan nyak....LOL

Ok Djen, I pray and hope to hear some more good news soon, perhaps this coming Christmas....ada announcement?..!!! 

And the recipes goes like this:

Source:  Mum's old English magazine

Rich Chocolate Cake

185gm butter (I used 200gm of Butterlite)

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 3/4 cups castor sugar

3 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour

2/3 cups of cocoa

1 cup water (I substituted with fresh milk)

Method:

1) Combine butter, vanilla essence, sugar, eggs, sifted flour & cocoa powder in large bowl.

2) Beat on low speed until ingredients combined.  Increase speed to medium, beat for about 3 minutes or until mixture is smooth.

3) Prepare a deep 23cm round cake pan (I used 24" round cake pan)

4)  Bake in moderate oven for about 1 1/2 hours.

Chocolate Icing

90gm dark chocolate (chopped)

30gm butter

1 cup icing sugar

2 tbsp of hot water (approximately)

Method: 

Melt chocolate, butter & hot water. Gradually stir in sifted sugar. 

Note:  for the chocolate icing, I had to add more butter (roughly about 100gm) as I thought that the icing was a bit watery initially because I added 2tbsp of hot water immediately in my hastiness. Hehehe..I guess I should have added the water bit by bit huh..anyway when I spread the icing to the cake, the icing seems to be wet at first but was very easy to spread and dried up easily.  And the icing was just nice and not too sweet for me la....

This recipe is definitely a keeper to me.  Simple and delish.