Genuinely. This recipe makes the most sinfully delicious chocolate cake you have ever tried – certainly encouraging you to create your very own Bruce Bogtrotter moment! Follow the upper recipe for beautiful sponge (courtesy of the Hummingbird Bakery, again! Their bakes are just so great!) and then follow the steps below it to take your amazing cake and elevate it to cake pop level. There is no way you can do justice to the chocolatey squishiness below in a photograph, but I did have a go, just for you.
The Best Chocolate Sponge Cake
Ingredients:
100g butter, room temperature (I use salted, Hummingbird use unsalted)
260g caster sugar
2 free-range eggs
1/4 tsp good-quality vanilla extract
45g cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
170g plain flour
160ml milk (I use semi-skimmed, Hummingbird use whole)
1 deep 20cm tin, or 3 thin 20cm cake tins if you wish to follow the hummingbird’s three tier recipe with custard filling here.
Recipe:
Preheat the oven, to 170c/Gas Mark 3.
In a bowl, mix your sugar and butter with an electric whisk and cream. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.
At a slow speed, carefully beat in the vanilla extract, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarb and salt, until well mixed. Add half the flour, mix in, add all the milk, mix in, then add the rest of the flour. Mix until well combined.
Pour this mix into your tin / tins, and smooth over with a palette knife for an even surface. Bake for c.30 minutes until a metal skewer comes out clean (25-30 for 3 thin tin recipe, +30 for the 1 tin recipe). Leave the cakes to cool slightly in the tin, then turn out on a wire rack to cool.
At this stage – you can choose to simply top, as i have done in the photo, with creamy chocolate philadelphia (I know, it’s weird, but it does work nicely on this cake!) or go ahead and crumble your cakes, and proceed with the cake pops recipe below!
White Chocolate-covered Cake Pops
Ingredients:
All ingredients for cake above, plus:
1 tbsp (or more) raspberry jam
1 tbsp (or more) chocolate spread (philadelphia chocolate cream cheese, or chocolate spread eg. nutella)
1 bar white chocolate
Recipe:
We’ve experimented with cake pops sometimes over here, and this cake is also the perfect base for them. To make cake pops, follow the recipe above and let it cool. Crumble up the cake well so that all the crumbs are relatively small and all a similar size, mix in 1tbsp of chocolate spread and 1tbsp of raspberry jam, and mix in well so that you have a squishy, fudgey cake mixture. Add more if your mix won’t hold together in a ball when you gently shape it.
Roll small, cakey balls between your hands (however big you want, but I’d suggest a size you could easily encapsulate, cupped between your two palms), but try not to compress them to much – you want to keep that delicate cake crumb.
Melt your bar of white chocolate over a bain marie, and then dip your pre-rolled balls into the silky mix. Coat them entirely, then cool in the fridge.
Try to use good quality raspberry jam – and if you can get real raspberries too, come Summer/Autumn, they make these cake pops an absolute masterpiece! They are absolutely gorgeous, and as a bonus, because they’re coated in chocolate they also last better than cake would alone. They’re a MUST BAKE!!
