Somebody has been pestering me to bake a French chocolate cake for a bit of time now. I have been meaning to but I’m not in a baking mood. However, I promised that person that I will try something easier as a prelude to that rich, chocolate cake.
I am positive that almost everyone has received a copy of the chocolate cup cake that is baked in the microwave. It has been going around for years! Not being a chocoholic (and I won’t apologise for that), I never got the motivation to try it – until now.
No scheduled meeting and the rain making me too lazy to read, I thought of tinkering in the kitchen. Why not the chocolate cake? After all, it’s only a double serving. If I won’t like it, it won’t take a day or two to finish. And if I do like it, it will be easy to replicate! And so I checked the different versions of the recipe and decided on this one from the BBC. I decided on a few revisions though.
Ingredients:
4 tbsp cake flour
4 tbsp muscovado sugar
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 egg
3 tbsp evaporated milk
3 tbsp butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
- Put flour, sugar and cocoa powder into the cup (mug or ramekin) and mix very well until there are no more lumps.
- Beat egg in another cup then add milk and butter.
- Combine the wet with the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly until totally blended.
The cake should rise to 2/3 its pre-baked size. Take out of the microwave, cool and serve on a plate.
The remains of my first instant chocolate cake experiment.
Notes:
- Not having any leavener, this indeed resembles a gateau more than a sponge cake, being dense and creamy.
- I used muscovado sugar and it makes for a not-too-sweet cake. It’s perfect for me but might not be for most.
- Adding 3 tbsp of cocoa powder might be too much for others while my preference is for dark chocolate.
- 1 tsp of vanilla extract combined with 3 tbsp of cocoa powder made the cake almost have a liqueur-like flavour.
I pawned my soul to Monsieur Linxe a long time ago and even have a copy of his Maison du Chocolat book not to mention a sizable collection of his empty boxes which I now fill with my own condensed milk chocolate fudge to give away but I find myself recoiling from rich chocolate cakes that are too sweet, too moist or too expensive to make or buy. I suspect a lot of people are taken in by the hype of expensive “gourmet” chocolates. Best cake in my estimation is Wesson’s chocolate chiffon, billowy soft and moist, intensely chocolaty although it only calls for common cocoa, butterless and therefore healthier, easy and not at all spendy to bake.
Ooohhh… do share the recipe! I like this version of the cake except it’s too rich for my taste. Perhaps I could double the recipe and use just one egg. I have half a mind to use orange extract instead of vanilla too.
yehey! instant chocolate cake! this is good news for someone like me who does not bake . . . perfect for sudden cravings ;-p
You made the cake!!! The question is, how did it taste? Did you like it considering you don’t like chocolate. Try the David Lebo recipe too! I haven’t tried it yet but with visitors coming I just might experiment.
wow tita, kpln u kmi pu gawang chocolate cake akaming anak yung SCM?aha