Black Magic cake

Last week we were in dire need of some baked goods. Seriously, there was NOTHING in the house- and the Taste tester and I don't really like having ready made stuff anymore. I guess its nice to know exactly what goes in to your food and who makes it. (Thats just a personal preference).

Anyway, since I've started studying again, alongside the freelancing work that I do, things have been crazy crazy!!

I was finally free for an hour and really wanted to bake something quick that I could finish in an hour, so that I could fit in a trip to the gym before the Taste tester got home.

I spent about 10 minutes searching the internet for the quickest recipe I could find and ended up in the Hershey's Kitchen website.

You've probably noticed that many times the recipes I choose to try out are just that, quick and easy.

Every now and again I like to try something complicated or a bit more time consuming- but right now I just didn't have any time for that!

The Black Magic cake is a simple, dark, light, fluffy, gorgeous, coffee-ish, chocolatey cake.

Yumminess :-)

The recipe was ridiculously easy and I had it in the oven in just about 10 minutes- and it spent just about 40 minutes inside. Brilliant.

I wanted a light frosting- something sweet but not heavy and with a hit of coffee in it.

You really need something extra coffee flavoured in the frosting because the cake just by itself is not very sweet and the chocolateyness somewhat overpowers the coffee.

It was worth a try. The Taste tester and his friends were very happy with it...

and that made me happy :-)

p.s excuse the hideous photographs

The texture was almost exactly like that of the
'Perfectly Chocolate'
cake that I made cupcakes out of-
so it would work well as cupcakes too!!

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

3/4 cup Hersheys cocoa

1 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

1 cup strong black coffee or 2 tsps powdered instant coffee plus one cup boiling water

1 tsp vanilla extract

1-3/4 cup all purpose flour

2 tsps baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk/ sourmilk*

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Method:

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans or one 13x9x2-inch baking pan. 

Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, buttermilk, coffee, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes (Batter will be thin). Pour batter evenly into prepared pans.

Bake 30 to 35 minutes for round pans, 35 to 40 minutes for rectangular pan or until wooden pick 
inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool 
completely. Frost as desired. Yields 10 to 12 servings

* To sour milk: Use 1 tablespoon white vinegar plus milk to equal 1 cup.

For the Frosting, I simply whipped up some double cream with sugar (according to taste), some cocoa powder and ground coffee.

It was perfect :-)

You could use buttercream or any frosting you like. Its totally up to you :-)

I didn't have much time so I just cut the cake in to half, filled the centre with some cream and then covered the whole thing with it after placing the top half on top of the bottom half. No time to be neat but that's how I like it anyway!!

For such a quick recipe, the results were totally worth it!!!

-S