Saturday, September 15, 2012

Weekend Cooking: Bung-in Chocolate Cake


A few months ago I posted about Kate Bracks' book The Sweet Life in a Weekend Cooking post and included a recipe for Lemon Syrup Cakes which were totally delicious! Kate Bracks won the Australian version of Masterchef and when we met her at a local book signing event she was incredibly generous with her time.

When I posted about this book I mentioned that there were quite a few different recipes that I wanted to try and one of those recipes was Bung-In Chocolate Cake. Now, to explain a colloquialism before we get too further much further on, to "bung in" means basically to throw it in, so you might bung a cake in the oven or in this case you bung in all the ingredients in a bowl together.

We have now made this cake several times, and it is just so easy, and it tastes soooo good! There is no melting of chocolate or anything complicated and it comes out with a beautiful dark chocolatey colour and flavour.

It's so easy to make that the little chef (who suddenly is much taller than I am...how did that happen?) has made this all by himself. There were a couple of small mishaps. The first was that he iced it while the cake was still hot and still in the tine which made it a bit awkward to get out of the tin when I got home. When I was cleaning up the mess all the mess, I took a look at my sieve  and was wondering what the stuff stuck to the bottom of it was. Turns out that he added the vanilla essence to the icing sugar while he was sifting it which I must confess made me laugh, but even despite those mishaps the cake still turned out pretty well!

We are at home on a Saturday night tonight, and I think that we are going to try her Choc-Chunk cookie recipe next.

If you happen to be looking for a really easy, really tasty basic chocolate cake recipe, then look no further as this one fits the bill!


Cake
300g (2 cups) self-raising flour
350g (1 1/2 cups) caster sugar
35g (1/3 cup) cocoa powder
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
350ml (1 1/3 cups) milk
150g butter, melted (preferably not unsalted butter)

Icing
200g (1 1/4 cups) icing sugar mixture
2 tbsp cocoa powder
30g butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease a 23cm (base measurement) square tin and line the base with baking paper.

2. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl, and stir to combine. Make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients. Whisk gently, gradually taking in the dry ingredients from the side of the bowl. Keep whisking until the mixture is smooth.

3. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes and then run a knife around the edge to separate the cake from the tin. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

4. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl. Add the melted butter and vanilla extract, and enough milk to get it to a paste consistency, stirring vigorously until smooth. You may not need all the milk. If it is too thick, add more milk. If it is too runny, add more icing mixture.

5. Once the cake has cooled, smother the top with chocolate icing.


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31 comments:

  1. This sounds really good! I've had a hard time finding the perfect basic chocolate cake recipe. Most I find are either too chocolatey for the kids or too brownie-like. I'm definitely going to give this one a try.

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    1. I hope you do give it a go and that you like it!

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  2. I love a good chocolate cake...and thank you for including our antiquated measurement system. :-)

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  3. Chocolate works for every time. Funny how you can find various recipes for chocolate cakes and they all taste wonderfully different.

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    1. Yes, all different but this is a good one!

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  4. Wow, you're right this one couldn't be easier. And I pretty much always have all the ingredients on hand. Great recipe to have in my files.

    And way too funny about the minor mishaps and mess -- at least the boy is willing to get into the kitchen.

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    1. This is the cake I was talking about on Twitter a few weeks ago when I said that I had made a cake without having to buy any new ingredients because I had everything in the cupboard already.

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  5. LOL @ the mishaps, but very impressed he wanted to make his own snacks! The cake sounds delicious.

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    1. I am happy that he wanted to give it a try!

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  6. Love chocolate cake! this sounds so good. Thanks

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  7. I'm glad you explained bung in! I got a little nervous there ...

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    1. One of those words that have different meanings in different places.

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  8. No, no, no ..... I am going to be strong and not make this lovely cake... have been doing too well on the weight management front to risk it! But lovely to read. Have a great weekend.

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    1. Well done on your strong will. Mine is nowhere near strong enough.

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  9. That sounds lovely. Fun about the young baker's adventures. All's well that ends well and it sounds like he'll be back in the kitchen for another try.

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    1. Yes, I suspect he will be trying to make this one again at least.

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  10. Mmm... this sounds delicious! I laughed about your son's mishaps - he sounds like my brothers did, trying to make cookies for the first time without my mom and me! But they learn - and I'm glad the cake turned out well.

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  11. We are beginnning to get cool fall weather here, and the aroma of a chocolate cake baking sounds almost as appealing as the treat itself. I love to bake in autumn.

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    1. I am happy baking in winter, spring and autumn. Not so keen on summer though.

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  12. Yum, sounds delicious. I've never made a cake from scratch.

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    1. This would be a pretty easy and tasty one to start with1

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  13. Yum, sounds like a good cake! (I must admit that reading 'bung in' after writing my 50 Shades review sounds naughty!)

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    1. Yes, I felt like I needed to explain it!

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  14. Yum. I'll have to remember to come back here for the recipe in a few weeks time, I am on post-holiday rations at the moment because I bought the outfit for The Offspring's wedding before I went overseas and indulged myself. No cakes until I'm back to what I weighed before I went away and had all those cocktails...*sigh*

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  15. I love the term "bung-in" and this chocolate looks looks easy and tasty, two of my favorites.

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  16. Will definitely give this a try soon Marg, haven't made chocolate cake in ages. Thanks for the recipe!

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  17. Yum, this sounds fantastic! I remember Kate from the Masterchef show (it seems that Masterchef Australia is conquering the world season by season :D I've seen Dutch translations of Julie Goodwin's and Adam Liaw's cookbooks!) and I wasn't aware that she'd already published a cookbook. I completely missed your feature post... this book goes straight onto the wishlist!

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  18. Thanks for including the recipe, I enjoyed watching Kate on Masterchef, she came across as very down to earth.
    Love chocolate cake, especially easy ones so I'm going to give this recipe a go now that my oven is fixed :)

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