The story behind the cake...last Thursday for our work morning tea, one of the guys brought it in. And O.M.G it was good. I think it's the chocolate cake I have been dreaming about all my life, no joke, it is that incredible. Incredibly moist but not too rich, it's got a bit of a black forest taste about it without an alchohol taste (if that makes any sense). And the icing is made from pomegranate juice and has just the right balance of tart and sweet.
And the secret ingredient? Mayonnaise. I kid you not. As SJ reminded me, it's basically just oil and eggs, so hardly shocking ingredients. But still!
This cake can keep for a week in the fridge and not dry out, though if you make it, it would surprise me greatly if it lasts this long.
I made this cake for our Ikea party at MissF and MissH's place on Saturday (basically a 'please come and put together our furniture and we'll buy you pizza' party).
I meant to take all sorts of photos as I was baking it, but didn't remember until the mixture was in the tray...so typical.
Here's the cake mixture, I bought a new bundt tray especially as the recipe calls for it and I didn't want to stuff it up. It was easy to see why the cake would be so moist, the mixture had the consistency of a chocolate milkshake...
Here's the cake out of it's tin. I was so relieved it came out in one piece! But as the recipes says, I buttered the thing like crazy and dusted with enough cocoa to make another cake altogether.
This is me crushing my pomegranate seeds to make the icing. It's messy stuff. WARNING, do not wear white. Or any colour that isn't the same colour as the pomegranate seeds. I ended up with juice on my walls...and I am working at an island bench so that says something! Oh and my face, lucky that just blended in with my freckles.
Because we had to head off to the Ikea party, I didn't let the cake cool for as long as I should of. The icing is supposed to drip down the sides, but not as much as mine did.
So I popped it in the fridge to solidify it a little, pulled it out, scraped all the icing off the bottom of the tray and plonked it all back on top. Then we left for the party.
This was what the cake looked like sitting at room temperature just before cutting, you can see the brilliant (not) effect my plonking of the excess icing has done. Right over the pomegranate seeds and almonds. Oh well, it still tasted great.
And I will do it better next time!
I won't type out the full recipe, I've included the scan of the magazine so hopefully that is readable.
But bascially...
SURPRISE RASPBERRY CHOCOLATE CAKE (with pomegranate icing)
The cake -
butter to grease
100g Dutch cocoa, extra to dust
1 cup buttermilk (I couldn't find this, so I used sour milk. 1 cup of milk plust 1 teaspoon of vinegar)
3 eggs
1 cup whole-egg mayonnaise
2 cups caster sugar
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 cup ground almonds (I used almond meal, I assume it is the same thing)
1 tsp bicarb soda
150g (half a packet) frozen raspberries
100g dark chocoalte, finely chopped (55% cocoa)
200mL water
1 tsp salt
The icing -
40g melted butter
1 pomegranate seeded
175g sifted icing sugar
20g flaked almonds, roasted (oops, just realised I never roasted mine).
1 - Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Grease pan with butter and dust with cocoa.
2 - Use electic mizer to combine buttermilk, eggs, mayonnaise and water until just combined
3 - Sift cocoa, caster sugar, flour, ground almonds, bicarb soda and salt.
4 - Add dry ingredients to wet mixture with wire whisk
5 - Add raspberries and chocolate and fold.
6 - Pour batter into pan, put on oven tray on bottom shelf of oven for 1 hour or until instered skewer is clean.
7 - Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan.
8 - Leave to cool before icing (I skipped this step, as you know)
9 - To make icing, put half pomegranate seeds in a bowl and crush with a spoon to get the juice out. Strain (I used a tea strainer) into a bowl. Mix 1 1/2 tablespoons of juice with icing sugar and melted butter into a bowl, add more juice or icing sugar as you see fit.
10 - Drizzle icing over cake
11 - Pat dry some of the remaining pomegranate seeds and sprinkle over cake with almonds (even if you forget to roast them)
12 - Let the icing set before you serve the cake...or don't, see if I care.
13 - Eat it.
There were 8 people at the party on Saturday who had already stuffed themselves with pizza. We had a very small portion of cake to take home and only because the host desperately wanted to keep some of the remainder too! It would have been polite for me to let her have it all, but it really is too good.
How I wish I could share a piece with you all and prove it to you!
YUM!!! Looks awesome, especially given it's your first go!!! xx
ReplyDeletethat looks so delicious!! Well done! x
ReplyDeleteOh yum, now I feel like cake!
ReplyDeleteUmmm WOW! Awesome looking cake! I must find myself a bundt pan and action one of these STAT. Love the pink icing! xx
ReplyDeleteyour cake looks delish!!
ReplyDeleteThat is very impressive looking x
ReplyDeleteI wish I had a slice right now :(
ReplyDeleteLooks great, might have to give this a go!
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed!!
ReplyDeleteI love the shape of the bundt cake but I've had so many experiences of it getting stuck! Good work on your first though. I will definitely try this out. p.s. love the new look of the blog!
ReplyDeleteYum! I've just started getting into cake decorating. I'll have to do some posts about it all. Great idea for a party too! (I'll have to remember that :)
ReplyDelete