Chocolate Cake

This chocolate sponge sandwich cake really is delicious and is my favourite. The recipe is my Grandma Kay’s and we were very happy to find it the other day. I remember my family and friends used to fight over pieces of this cake!

It’s especially tasty when you can get a really good quality dark chocolate spread to use in the butter cream topping.

The recipe uses bicarbonate of soda instead of eggs. So it can also be eaten by vegans, or those avoiding eggs. You can also use gluten-free flour if you wish.

(If you love your butter then you can substitute butter for the margarine.)

8 oz. (225g) Self-Raising flour
4 oz (115g) sugar
3 oz (85g) margarine
teaspoon salt
1 oz (28g) cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate)
10 tablespoons (150ml) hot water
1 tablespoon (15ml) black treacle (or molasses)
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

• Melt margarine
• Dissolve treacle in the hot water
• Mix all DRY ingredients
• Add bicarbonate of soda to treacle water and stir QUICKLY into dry ingredients
• Stir in melted margarine, it will make a slack batter (not stiff, but not runny you could pour it).
• Pour into 2 sponge sandwich tins and cook at 350F (180C) for 20 - 25 minutes. When the cake is ready it will come away slightly from the edge of the tins and have NO wet batter left in the middle.

Chocolate Cake Filling and Topping

2 oz (50g) butter or olive oil spread
2oz (50g) icing sugar
Large spoonful readymade, good quality, dark chocolate spread.

Mix all together and use to sandwich and topping. (Try to keep cake cool as the filling gets soft if too warm).

Decorate top of cake with desiccated coconut.

In our house this cake never lasted long enough to test its keeping very long, but it does keep 2-3 days if you can resist it!

Another version for the topping is: When sponge is cold sandwich the 2 pieces together with fresh cream if eating straight away. The top can be covered with chocolate and sieved icing sugar dusted through a doyley to make a pattern