Every house in the world deserves a go-to delicious chocolate cake recipe for those special
occasions, birthdays, parties, you name it. So I'm making this for my boy River who is a chocolate
aficionado and if he likes it you're all gonna like it. This one is a choccy one-tray wonder, it
starts off with a beautiful light fluffy chocolate sponge. It's very easy to do, we're gonna use
a food processor this is brilliant because it takes all the whipping out of it but if you've
got a spatula and a whisk you can just do this in a bowl. So 250 grammes of beautiful butter,
250 grammes of icing sugar, put that in like that. And we'll whizz that up. Get yourself four eggs.
Looks like we've got special effects! Four lovely free-range eggs.
So that whipping will give it some volume.
And then we'll go in with 250 grammes of self-raising flour, and then two teaspoons
of baking powder because we want it to be really light and fluffy. A pinch of salt as well.
And 50 grammes of cocoa powder.
Wazz that up. Get a little spatula. And then I don't like to over-whisk this,
just as soon as it's come together you're done. Now I want to line that tray
with some greaseproof paper. If I just put that in there now it's quite hard to line, so what I do
is scrumple it up and run it under a tap, and just by softening it up with a little
water it just means that that will stick to the sides and all the curvature of the tray.
And now fill it with your beautiful sponge. These are the kind of recipes
that you pass down the generations and as my kids go off to university and stuff like that,
and you get the phone call like, "I want to do a birthday cake what was the recipe?"
This is the recipe. Just do the best you can to get into all the little corners. That now
goes in an oven for about 20 - 25 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius which is about 350 Fahrenheit.
Come here, Conker! Sit. Good boy! Your luck's out - there's no sausages, there's no chicken,
there's no steak, there's just chocolate. So that cake has had 20 minutes.
Simple things in life right? Good chocolate cake. Gently put that down because you want to keep as
much of the volume as possible. While that cools down let's make the buttercream. 200 grammes
of butter going into the mixer again and 150 grammes of cream cheese just gives it a silkiness
and a freshness that I absolutely love. And then 400 grammes of icing sugar. So in the mixer.
Wazz that one up, until it's nice and smooth.
One of the flavours I'm putting inside this beautiful chocolate sponge cake
is some mandarin segments, so think chocolate and orange, but the mandarins are delicious,
the tinned ones are amazing. And just steal some of that juice and put it into the buttercream and
give it a little whizz up. It'll flavour it and it'll allow you to spread it a little easier.
Oh actually it's given it a lovely little shine. So let the chocolate sponge - yeah... yes Conks.
And my last little job before I go and entertain Conker for a few seconds is get some kitchen paper
and drain off some of these little mandarins, so this will be in the layer of our chocolate sponge.
These are really really good with chocolate. But you don't want them soggy so just pop them
on some kitchen paper and job's a good'un. Let that sponge cool down a little bit more and then
I'll show you how quick it is to put together, you're gonna absolutely love it. Come on Conker!
So let's get this sponge off the rack.
Grab a little serrated knife and try and keep that exactly in the middle and move the sponge around,
and it will join up with the original cut, then you can follow that cut
all the way through. And then you can push it to one side. Then essentially we're making
a glorified sandwich. Get yourself a board that you want to serve this on.
Take about a third of this mix and butter it just like a sandwich, right to the edges.
And take these little clementines and just march them down.
These are like little juicy surprises that you get when you bite through. Then
we can get that sponge and put it back on top. So there is our chocolate sponge sandwich,
and now we're gonna turn that blonde buttercream into a chocolate buttercream.
So 25 grammes of cocoa powder is gonna be delicious so 20 seconds of whizzing up.
We are now good to go.
Get as much of that gorgeous chocolate buttercream on top, it's just beautiful. And until I got
my dog I didn't realize you couldn't give 'em chocolate, it's a bit of a shame innit they're
missing out badly but push that chocolate buttercream to the edge, look at that.
Ooh! That's delicious, right don't tell anyone I had a little taste. And then of course if
it's a birthday cake you can put your candles in and all that sort of business it'll be lovely.
Yum. Get your serrated knife and you can just take the end off of this beautiful
sponge, just to show you the cross section. Look at that, beautiful.
My family they're absolutely going to love this. Whoa! Look at that. It's gonna melt the chocolate!
How big do you want it? Really big. Ohh!
Wow, that's way too big. Eat the tangerines inside they look delish.
Mum, this one is dedicated to you. Beautiful sponge,
and those little hits of the mandarins are so good. This is actually really good dad.