Chocolate Cake, delicious and moist

Ingredients:

2 Cups / 500 ml all purpose flour

¾ cup / 175 ml cocoa powder (unsweetened)

2 Cups / 500 ml sugar

1 ½ tsp / 7 ml Baking Powder

2 tsp / 10 ml  Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda in USA)

Pinch of salt

2 eggs

1 cup / 250 ml milk

1 tsp / 5 ml vanilla essence

½ cup / 125 ml oil

½ cup / 125 ml hot water

½ cup / 125 ml strong coffee (or just add another ½ cup of water, but the coffee adds a richness but without providing any of the coffee flavour)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180 °C. Grease (use cooking spray, it’s the easiest) and line (with baking paper) 2 x 23 cm round cake pans, or 1 rectangular tin of about 23 x 33 cm.
• In a large bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together.
• In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla essence. Beat well together, then with the beaters running, add the hot water and coffee (make sure you don’t cook the egg by keeping the beaters going)
• Pour the batter into your prepared tins, and bake for about 35 to 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake.
• Let the cake cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes before removing it from the tin and removing the baking paper.
• If you plan on icing the cake, let it cool completely first. Otherwise, let it cool until it is warm, then dust the top with icing sugar and enjoy a slice of warm oven baked cake with a delicious cup of tea on a winters afternoon – can’t get better than that.
• To keep the children entertained, we make decorations from roll out white icing (add food colouring if needed)