Decadent Chocolate cake with a delicious coconut flavoured icing
Dreaming of a chocolate cake, baking it, and devouring it, is a common obsession of mine. Also, I had many excuses to bake chocolatey treats, what with Valentine’s just around the corner. Not to mention many other reasons to eat cake following in quick succession after Valentines – my dad and husband’s birthday and our wedding anniversary, woohoo!
With so many occasions all lined up one after the other, a mega celebration was in order. And as we all know any celebration, big or small is incomplete without, yes you guessed right a proper cake.
So my plan was to bake an indulgent and rich chocolate cake and how better than Nigella to look to for a good recipe! Unable to pick a recipe on my own, I asked my neighbour’s adorable 5-year daughter to flip through Nigella Lawson’s book ”Feast” – Food That Celebrates Life. Lucky for me she stopped flipping pages at Nigella’s Old Fashioned Chocolate cake recipe. Better still it is made using only the food processor – so very perfect.
Besides, no better way to bring in Valentine’s week than by baking a decadent chocolate cake with hints of coconut flavour and adding some coconut flavoured icing on the top. I love Nigella’s original recipe which I have (dared to!) modify as I had been thinking of ways to use the lovely samples sent to me by Sugar and Crumbs.
I have modified the original recipe by using three medium-sized regular eggs, thick yogurt instead of sour cream, and have reduced the quantity of ingredients for the icing because I am not a big fan of slathering a very thick layer of sugary icing in between the layers nor am I very fond of a huge layer of icing on the top but I guess even after reducing the quantities of ingredients for the icing I still managed to get lots to smother the cake with. I have used Sugar and Crumbs flavoured cocoa powder in Chocolate Coconut and Sugar and Crumbs flavored natural icing sugar in coconut flavour, result – a perfectly balanced taste of coconut without being overpowering. So am calling my cake – ”Chocolate Coconut Cake with Coconut flavoured Icing”.For the remaining part, the original recipe is perfect, basic, simple, and therefore beautiful as it is foolproof and even a novice can get an excellent delicious, fluffy, and intensely chocolatey cake – very satisfying indeed! Thank You, Nigella!
Chocolate Coconut Cake
Equipment
- Two 8 inch Round cake tins
- Food Processor or stand-mixer
- Spatula
- Measuring spoons
- Cake tester or thin skewer
Ingredients
- 200 grams plain flour
- 200 grams caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 40 grams Sugar and Crumbs flavoured cocoa powder in Chocolate Coconut
- ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 175 grams soft unsalted butter
- 3 medium-sized eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 150 ml thick-set yogurt
Instructions
- Sift the plain flour through a sieve into a large mixing bowl
- Add the caster sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and bicarbonate of soda
- Mix well with a spatula and transfer it into the food processor
- Crack the eggs into the mixture, add the vanilla essence and the yogurt and mix roughly with a spatula before running the food processor to ensure that the loose flour doesn’t fly all over the place. For the first 30 seconds, I lightly covered the chute of the processor with my palm to prevent the flour from flying out in a mist. Now, this is the reason I want a Kitchen Aid 😉
- After an initial spin, use the blunt edge of the knife to scoop out what stuck to the walls of the processor and mix well with the cake batter.
- Don’t worry if you think the batter is very thick, another spin for about a minute should give you the required consistency to ”pour” into the cake tins
- Grease two removable base 8-inch tins with butter and equally divide the cake batter into each tin
- Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C/350ºF
- Bake for 25 minutes and then test the center of the cake with a cake tester or thin skewer
- My cakes were done in 25 minutes but you may need up to 30 minutes depending on the type of oven. The cakes rose beautifully but the top had cracks. The icing was there to save the day and make the cake look pretty
- Remove cakes from the baking tray and leave to cool down on a wire rack
Coconut flavoured Icing
Ingredients
- 50 grams unsalted butter
- 125 grams best quality dark chocolate broken into small pieces
- 225 grams icing sugar
- 100 ml sour cream
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- While the cakes are in the oven prepare the icing by mixing together all the ingredients of the icing
- The original recipe calls for adding golden syrup but I totally gave that a miss
- Why? Because I had already borrowed some butter, some yogurt, baking powder, and bicarbonate of soda from my very patient neighbour H 😉 – yes, yes she did get a large portion of this cake 🙂
- Now to ice the cakes place the slightly domed part of one cake face down and slather icing on the flat part and place the other cake flat side down on the icing and then slather icing all over the cake
- I had some pretty pink and white sugar stars which I used to decorate my cake.
I have also been sent Sugar and Crumbs Coffee Flavoured icing sugar and a pack of salted caramel powder, maybe cupcakes need to be baked next ?:)
Linking this post to the We should Cocoa event hosted by Choclette who blogs at Choc Log Blog where the challenge is to use an ingredient and that ingredient is chocolate – how apt for Valentines, and with all that gorgeous dark chocolate this cake certainly qualifies!
My blog post is being linked to Dom’s Random Recipes event hosted by Dom who blogs at Belleau Kitchen, where for February the challenge is to select any chocolate-themed recipe book and to make a randomly selected recipe from that book. The idea of this recipe challenge is to make us home chefs step outside our comfort zones and make something that we would otherwise hesitate to and totally avoid. Humm okay, I got off easy this time 🙂
Also for the first time. I’m joining in with Jibber Jabber’s Love Cake first ever event where the theme for the month of love BAKING WITH PASSION and is a cake-baking challenge.
Disclaimer: With many thanks to Sugar and Crumbs for the generous amount of samples to test and review.I was not required to write a positive review and was not compensated monetarily for this post. Like all my previous posts about events and reviews, ALL opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
