Recipe // Naughty Chocolate Fudge Cake

A few weeks ago, my brother asked me to make a cake for my nephew's 5th birthday party. As a keen baker I was happy to oblige, and quickly decided to use this BBC Good Food recipe for chocolate fudge cake, as it's been a perennial favourite in my house for quite some time. It's a really easy recipe to make, and goes down a storm with kids and adults alike.

Ingredients

175g Self raising flour

2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder

1 Tsp Bicarbonate soda

150g Caster sugar

2 Eggs Beaten

150 ml (1/4 pint) Sunflower oil

150 ml (1/4 pint) Semi skimmed milk

2 Tbsp Golden syrup

For the Coating and filling

75g Unsalted butter

175g Icing Sugar

3 Tbsp Cocoa Powder

Drop of Milk

Method (in words)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180ºC/350F/Gas Mark 4 (less for fan ovens). Grease and line two 18cm (7 inch) sandwich tins.
2. Sieve the flour, cocoa and Bicarbonate of Soda into a bowl. Add the sugar and mix well.
3. Make a well in the centre and add the syrup, eggs, oil and milk. Beat well with electric whisk until smooth.
4. Spoon the mixture into the two tins and bake for 20 - 25 minutes until risen and firm to the touch. Remove from oven, leave to cool before turning out onto a cooling rack.
5. To make your butter icing, place the butter in a bowl and beat until soft. Gradually sift and beat in the icing sugar and cocoa powder then add enough milk to make the icing fluffy and spreadable.
6. If the cake has risen a little too high then use a serrated knife to even off the top, now sandwich the two cakes together with the butter icing and cover the sides and the top of the cake with more butter icing.

Method (in pictures)

Make sure you have all your ingredients to hand.

Weigh out your ingredients. Here I've already combined the flour, cocoa powder and bicarb. It doesn't matter if you are slightly over/under.

Sift your flour, cocoa powder and bicarb into a large bowl. Try and sift as high as you can to get air into the mixture - this will make your sponge light and fluffy.

Add your sugar and mix well into the mixture.

Once you've added your wet ingredients, mix well with an electric hand whisk, or an electric mixer (if you're lucky enough to have one). Make sure you check that every but of dry mixture is added (glass bowls make it easier to see this).

Carefully pour your mixture into your pre-lined tin. Place into the centre of a preheated oven and keep a close eye on it! My first cake burnt because I was too busy painting my nails!

Whilst the cake is cooling you make can your buttercream icing. Simply combine butter, icing sugar, cocoa powder and a drop of milk. This butttercream will go hard fairly quickly, so make sure you keep stirring it whilst it's in the bowl.

Finally, decorate your cake. My nephew is hugely into Star Wars so I used a pre-made icing sheet transfer to decorate it, surrounded by a sea of chocolate buttons. 

Have fun baking!