Eggless Chocolate Cake

Chocolate - the mere name lightens up most people's faces. Some miss out on eating chocolate cakes because most chocolate cakes have eggs in them. Here's a moist and delightful chocolate cake recipe without eggs which I got from here.

Since there is no oven at my disposal right now, I went to my mum's sister's place. It was fun baking the cake with Nandini Pachi. She has baked several delicious cakes, and I got some good tips from her.

To frost the cake, I used this recipe. As Hershey's calls it, it definitely is the "Perfectly Chocolate" chocolate frosting. Btw, I have even tried the Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" chocolate cake recipe a few months back, so if you want to try a cake with eggs, just go here.

Coming back to the eggless cake, here's the recipe:

NOTE : You can easily halve the recipe if you are looking for an 8" or 9"cake.


Ingredients:
3 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp cocoa powder
2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 tbsp vanilla 
2 tbsp white vinegar (or freshly squeezed lemon juice)
3/4 cup oil
One chocolate bar (for the chocolate shavings)

Method:
Blend together the wet ingredients - water, vanilla, vinegar, oil. 

Add sugar and blend till sugar dissolves.


Sift together, the dry ingredients - flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt.

Incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

Line a 9" by 13" pan with parchment paper, or grease it well. (I used a 10" by 11").  You can also use two 8" round pans.

Bake at 350F (180C) for 40 minutes or until fork inserted comes out clean.


If you plan to frost the cake, cut the cake vertically into half, spread some sugar syrup on the top of one half (spreading sugar syrup is optional. It gives you a softer cake).

Spread the frosting on it, place the other half upside down on the first, spread sugar syrup on top and frost the cake all over. And after your are completely done, lick the spatula. It's understandable.


[If you are using two 8" round cakes, then spread sugar syrup and frosting on one, place the other cake on top of it and frost all over].


Chocolate frosting:
1/2 cup butter (I used the 100g pack)

2/3 cup Hershey's cocoa (I used cadbury's)
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract


Melt butter. Add cocoa power, sugar, vanilla. Add milk little by little and blend well. Keep scraping the sides to make sure all the ingredients blend in well.

Make sure you don't add too much milk, the frosting will become runny and you will not be able to spread it easily. 


Chocolate Shavings:

Take a block of chocolate (I used semi sweet cooking chocolate at room temperature). Place a parchment paper (or any paper for that matter) on the table, under the chocolate. With a peeler, scrape the chocolate, starting from the edges, and let the curls fall on the paper. 


Decorate the cake with the chocolate shavings.

Update : I baked this cake for my son's birthday party. I made two cakes of two layers each (yes, I made four cakes totally, I was just scared we would run out of cakes!) and made four batches of the same icing. I also used semi-sweet chocolate curls along with milk chocolate curls. Here is the picture of the main cake. The other cake was in the fridge as a standby.

My First Bread

Ater baking a few cakes, I thought, why not bake bread?! I turned to aayisrecipes.com and decided to try her Cumin Bread.

I modified the recipe slightly. Here's the recipe:

To 1 cup warm water, add 1 tbsp unsalted butter (room temperature), 1/2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp olive oil and 2 and 1/4 tsp (1 packet) of active dry yeast.

Set aside for 10 minutes till yeast turns frothy.

Add 1 tsp roasted cumin seeds, 1 tsp salt, 1 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour. [ The original recipe calls for 2 cups all purpose flour and 1 cup wheat flour].

Knead really well, adding a little water if necessary. Cover and set aside in a vessel greased with oil, for 2 hours. The dough will almost double in size.

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangular shape.

Starting along one side, roll up the dough into a loaf, pinching the seams to hold the loaf together.

 Roll over so that the seams are at the bottom. Apply olive oil around the loaf, cover and set aside for an hour. The loaf will increase in size.

Make slits on top.

Bake at 500 F for half an hour. Shilpa suggests adding butter after 15 mts and baking for another 15mts. I skipped the butter and the bread did not turn all that brown. But I have no complaints!

The bread turned out very tasty. Like Shilpa calls it, 'crusty on the outside, soft on the inside'.

Sending the entry to The YeastSpotting event.

On another note, MD was nice enough to shower the Sunshine Blog award on apycooking.

I would like to pass this award to all the new food bloggers, who started their blog in 2010, adding more sunshine to the blogworld! If you are one of them, please accept this award.