British Autumn comforts, Chocolate cake!

Summer is over, you're eyeing up your winter coat, you're arguing whether you should turn the heating on and on top of that you may have caught a cold. Fear not, we have got a cake recipe fit for a king.

INGREDIENTS

• 340g of self-raising flour
• 525g of caster sugar
• 75g of cocoa powder
• 2½ of teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
• 100g of dark chocolate
• 180ml of sunflower oil
• 3 eggs
• 375ml of water

For the buttercream and filling

• 340g unsalted butter
• 300g of icing sugar
• 60g of cocoa powder

Tools Needed

• Two deep 20cm springform cake tins.
• Large mixing bowl
• Skewer
• Oven (obviously)
• Wire cooling rack
• Icing spatula
• Electric stand mixer or do it manually
• Balloon whisk

TIME NEEDED

Prep: 30min  ›  Cook: 1 Hour to 1:30  ›  Ready in: 2 Hours

First things first is the chocolate cake. So start by preheating the oven to 180°C or gas Mark 4. Then grease and line two deep 20cm springform cake tins. Afterwards melt your chocolate for the next step.

Your ingredients we listed earlier now (flour, caster sugar, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda) need to be placed into a large mixing bowl and whisked together.

After this, stir in the chocolate you melted in the beginning along with the oil and eggs, add  hot water and mix quickly. Be careful not to overwork the mixture. If your mix is very loose or ‘runny’, don’t worry as this is how we want it. This will result moist cake with a tad bit of crumb which is what we are aiming for.

Next step for our creation is to divide the mixture between the 2 tins we prepared earlier, make sure the surface is level with a Icing spatula .

Next is the "bakeoff bit" put your now level(ish) tins into the oven for 35 to 40 minutes, and assume the "bakeoff position".

Do this until the cake is ready cooked risen, then strike a skewer into the cake and if it comes out out clean, you are the owner of a new chocolate cake! (well 2 halves of 1).

Remove the halves from the oven and leave to rest in the tins for around 10 minutes, then as carefully as you would a toddler, turn out the cakes onto a wire cooling rack. (We mean the care as much as a child not that you would put a toddler on a wire rack) wait to cool.

For the buttercream, put the  unsalted butter in bowl from before (washed up before this of course) of an electric mixer, or of course you can hand mix with a large wooden spoon. Then make a scene M&S would be proud of by sifting the icing sugar and cocoa powder over the butter. (for extra immersion play Rather Be by Clean Bandit whilst you do this) mix together until lighter in colour and fluffy.

Now comes the bob the builder bit, assemble the cake! We do this by carefully cutting each half of the cake into halves themselves to make 4 layers of cake. Spread a thin layer of the buttercream on top, then place a second layer of cake on top. Spread this with buttercream on top as well, then repeat this one more time with a third layer of cake. Another M&S moment is needed to complete your creation, cover the entire cake with the remaining buttercream, spreading it evenly all over, make whatever patterns you like afterwards if you want as well.