Life’s too short, eat cake first!

Alongside the banana loaf I showed you on Monday’s post I made this chocolate cake scattered with pecans and caramel drizzle for The Great British Bake Off last Wednesday.  So I thought I would share with you how I made it, it’s really easy so I hope you’ll feel confident and inspired to try it out for yourself.

What you will need:

100g dark chocolate

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

113g margarine/butter

200g granulated sugar

175g plain flour

pinch of salt

pinch of coffee granules

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons of baking powder

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

______________

Pecans

Caramel sauce

First off you need to heat your oven to 180oC

Here’s how you make it and what you need to do:

1 – Break the chocolate into pieces and place it into a jug or a bowl

2 – Add your cocoa into the jug with the chocolate pieces

3 – To the chocolate pieces and the cocoa add the pinch of coffee granules (sounds strange, but it enhances the taste of the chocolate and doesn’t leave a coffee taste or smell)

4 – Cover the chocolate mix in boiling water

Just enough water to cover the chocolate mix

5 – Stir together the chocolate mix and leave it to melt completely

6 – Measure out your sugar and margarine/butter and cream together

7 –  Once your margarine and sugar are creamed together and look pale, fluffy and light, add your eggs, one at a time

Beating the egg in completely

8 – With the second one add the vanilla extract and mix together again

9 – Weigh out your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and salt) into a separate bowl

10 – Add the dry ingredients into your margarine, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract

Mix everything together slowly so your flour doesn’t fly out everywhere

Don’t worry if your cake batter is too dry looking at this point

11. Because you are going to add your chocolate mixture from your jug, just make sure you give it a good stir to combine it all first

Don’t think there is too much chocolate and it will be too wet, this is a wet mix

12. Mix the cake batter mix together until smooth and velvety

Like this, the mix at the end will look smooth, glossy and like velvet with a nice shine

13 – Roughly chop up your pecans

14 – Pour your cake batter into a lined (with greaseproof paper) tin and scatter with your chopped pecans and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes

15 – When the cake has been in for the time, check that it is cooked.  You can do this with a knife or a skewer, stick it into the centre of the cake

If the skewer or knife comes out clean like the picture above you know it’s ready, if it comes out with cake batter on it, it’s not ready.  Just put it in the oven for about 3-5 minutes and test again

 

16 – Let the cake cool on a rack

17. Once the cake has cooled a little drizzle with lots of caramel sauce (I used a bottle because I couldn’t be bothered to make my own if I’m being truly honest with you!)

18. Serve and enjoy!!!!

I would love to hear if you try out my recipe and how it goes! So please leave a comment or send me a picture on my Facebook Page, instagram account, twitter account or on Snapchat @mylifemyblogzane