Chocolate cake is the best. But I have a contentious relationship with buttercream icing – I never seem to make enough. Add to this the scarily expensive price of butter these days and you can understand why I love this chocolate sheet cake that not only does NOT require the anxious mixing of icing (and the subsequent spreading thereof) but is also fairly quick to mix up and bake.
Not only is it rich and chocolately, it’s covered in a chocolate icing sauce that dries to a crunchy deliciousness and is easy for little ones to decorate and help make.
This cake comes from an old recipe book of my mother’s that we’ve since lost, and was called ‘Adelaide Sheet Cake’. I’ve added in a variation where you replace the water with coffee for an extra touch of delicious darkness.
Ingredients
- 275g cake flour (2 cups)
- 400g sugar (2 cups)
- A pinch of salt
- 125g butter
- 250ml water (1 cup) OR (for a decadent darkness) replace the water with 1 cup of strong coffee
- 125ml sunflower oil (½ cup)
- 50g cocoa (½ cup)
- 125ml buttermilk (½ cup)
- 5ml bicarb of soda
- 2 extra large eggs
Icing
- 60g butter (5 tbsps)
- 37.5ml buttermilk (3 dessertspoons)
- 30ml cocoa (2 tbsps)
- 200g icing sugar (1 ½ cups)
- 5ml vanilla
Method
- Oven 200C.
- Grease sheet 30cm x 25cm x 5cm grilling pan/ baking sheet.
- Sift flour, sugar, salt together.
- Heat butter, water, sunflower oil and cocoa in a saucepan until boiling briskly.
- Cool slightly, then pour over the flour mixture and mix well.
- Mix buttermilk and bicarb of soda. Beat eggs lightly and mix with buttermilk.
- Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture and mix well.
- Pour batter into pan. Bake 25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the cake comes out clean.
- ICING: heat butter, buttermilk and cocoa to boiling point. Remove from stove. Sift and stir in the icing sugar and vanilla icing.
- Pour hot icing over hot cake, making sure to let it go down the sides and covers the top evenly.
- Allow cake to cool, cut into 5cm squares.
Mission Succexy 