Chocolate cake

[ZeroCook Profile]

Didn't work before but now does - go figure! Thanks!

[Suelle Profile Website]

I'm one of those people who has never found a really great chocolate cake recipe - who know why. I'm really liking the look of Scullion's one tho. Pics are a bit low res but. Any chance of sharper ones? Or a link to an original version? Or an ingredients list etc? My halfbaked search only came up with an even lower res image!

Interesting question - I just checked 3 recipes online, including one on a Roald Dahl Fans page, and they are all wildly different. It would be interesting to know which one Scullion was using.

Here's the one you might expect to be the original, but who knows?: https://www.roalddahlfans.com/dahls-wor ... ters-cake/

Incidentally - if I click on any links to the old Wildfood site, I get nothing but garbage!

[ZeroCook Profile]

Suelle - the WF links actually worked for me after a few tries.

Reason the recipe looks interesting is the method - I recently tried combining two chocolate cake recipes - one was Elizabeth David's that uses melted dark chocolate but no cocoa and the other a chocolate genoise sponge using cocoa but no chocolate. I wanted a chocolate and cocoa recipe with not too much suagar. The result was pretty bad due to method imo - I ended up trying to fold stiff egg whites and melted butter into a dense mixture. No air.

My quest, a chocolatey geniose sponge type method/texture made with added chocolate. And not oversweet. I use 90% dark chocolate.

What would happen if the bbogtrotter recipe used less sugar? Say 150g?

[ZeroCook Profile]

This might work

[Seatallan Profile]

Deffo trying this!!

[Suelle Profile Website]

That looks like the same as my link but in metric measurements.

The consensus seems to be that you can reduce sugar by about 25% before you start to affect things like texture and crumb structure, as well as reducing sweetness, so in this recipe I think 180g sugar would be minimum acceptable. Using a good quality really dark chocolate (80%) would make the taste less sweet, but any cake with this much chocolate will be dense and fudgy - perhaps not what you're looking for.

[ZeroCook Profile]

I'll follow others' and my own advice to make first time recipes exactly to instructions

[slimpersoninside Profile]

I'm one of those people who has never found a really great chocolate cake recipe - who know why. I'm really liking the look of Scullion's one tho. Pics are a bit low res but. Any chance of sharper ones? Or a link to an original version? Or an ingredients list etc? My halfbaked search only came up with an even lower res image!

I was like that too Zero. It depends what you're looking for.

My problem was I wanted chocolaty and spongy, not easy to get both. Chocolatey usually means dense, and spongy means not very chocolatey. The Michael Barry one is the nearest to my chocolate cake nirvana.......thus far .

[Suelle Profile Website]

If you want a cake which is richer than a sponge, but not too dense, then this is another Dan Lepard recipe which works really well:

https://www.goodfood.com.au/recipes/dou ... pxzf2.html

I couldn't find 8" sponge tins, without loose bottoms, which were also deep, when I made it (not for a reasonable price, anyway), so bought 3 shallower tins to make a triple layer cake. I don't usually like melting white chocolate, but it was worth the stress for this cake!

Here's my version:
https://mainlybaking.blogspot.com/2016/ ... e-and.html

[ZeroCook Profile]

Slimper - I'll take a look at Michael Barry. You may be totally right about chocolatey plus spongey. My dream too. Maybe they're just mutually exclusive because chocolate is so fatty. I've never really been a fan of making Victoria type sponge method cakes - they just seem to elude me and end up crumbly. I prefer the whipped eggs/fold in flour/melted butter method - more eggy spongey less crumb-ey.

Suelle - that DL recipe looks pretty interesting - he really just throws in and mixes everything together. You got a good looking result. Do you find some of his cake and recipes are often overly sweet? I still make a fair number of his recipes and have various notes to self halve the sugar. Bearing in mind your caveat about sugar earlier ....

I think I've used silicone pans maybe once or twice - didn't like the wobblyness factor pre baking. I'm a charity shop, market and ebay kitchenware hunter - so much great ‘vintage’ stuff that people toss out.

[Suelle Profile Website]

Suelle - that DL recipe looks pretty interesting - he really just throws in and mixes everything together. You got a good looking result. Do you find some of his cake and recipes are often overly sweet? I still make a fair number of his recipes and have various notes to self halve the sugar. Bearing in mind your caveat about sugar earlier ....

I'm the wrong person to ask - I have a sweet tooth!