YUMMY PICNIC CHOCOLATE CAKE…IT’S HEALTHY TOO!!

YUMMY PICNIC CHOCOLATE CAKE

Love experimenting with chocolate cakes for the kids…and am trying to get to the perfect chocolate cake sans frosting. I have tried umpteen recipes, and find that the good ones use far more butter than I like, or have to be frosted to taste good. The perfect balance in taste, ingredients, fibre etc is probably yet to come…but I made this this afternoon, and find it comes quite close. It’s simple, straight-forward & from my heart! I tossed in ingredients from the top of my head like an expert, and then stood with my heart in my mouth when I gave my son a slice. The son gave it an instant ‘thumbs up’, and am awaiting my daughters’ return from her trekking trip to get her review. Will post it soon after…

(P.S. She’s back…and she LOVES it!!)

Ingredients:

Butter – ½ cup (room temperature)
Granular Sugar – 1 ½ cups
Eggs – 4 small (if the eggs are big; use 3 whole eggs +1 egg yolk)
Vanilla essence/extract – 1 tsp
Flour – 1 cup
Whole-wheat flour – ½ cup
Cocoa – ½ cup
Baking powder – 1 tsp
Baking soda – ½ tsp
Cream – 3 tbsp
Yogurt – 6 tbsp
Juice of ½ a lime
Walnuts – ½ cup (optional)
Chocolate chips – ½ cup (optional; I put Ghirardeli dark bits & think they complement the cake BEAUTIFULLY!)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180degrees C.
• Line and grease the base of an 8” Victoria sandwich tin/ 8” round tin. Grease and flour the sides.
• Sift flour + whole-wheat flour + cocoa + baking powder + baking soda 3 times. Set aside.
• Mix the yogurt + cream + lime juice in a small bowl. Set aside.
• Beat butter till fluffy. Add sugar and beat well.
• Add eggs and vanilla essence and beat well for 5 minutes.
• Add 1/3 of the sifted dry mix and beat in at low speed, followed by a third of the yogurt mix.
• Repeat twice till both flour mix and yogurt mix are finished and well mixed in.
• Fold in walnuts and chocolate chips if desired.
• Turn batter into prepared tin and level out. Can add sprinkles on top.
• Bake for approx 1 ¼ hour or till tester comes out clean.
• Leave to cool in tin for 30 minutes. Turn out on rack and cool completely.
• This tastes really nice when sliced warm.

Note: Check after about 45 minutes to an hour. If you find that the top is browning too fast, loosely place a sheet of foil over the top.

A slice of cake with pink sprinkles…THINK PINK FOLKS!!