Chocolate Caramel Cake
Overview
A one-bowl chocolate cake made with hot coffee and vinegar, layered with a caramel and whipped cream icing. No country is claimed, though the contributor is South African and one ingredient gives that away: marula cream flavour, from the marula fruit that grows across southern Africa and is best known internationally through the liqueur made from it. Two ingredients in this recipe are doing technical work and are worth understanding rather than skipping. Hot coffee is the first. Cocoa powder is largely insoluble in cold liquid, and hot liquid dissolves it far more completely, releasing flavour compounds that would otherwise stay locked in dry powder. Coffee specifically shares aromatic compounds with chocolate, so it deepens the chocolate flavour rather than making the cake taste of coffee. In this quantity you will not taste coffee at all. Vinegar is the second, and it looks stranger than it is. Bicarbonate of soda needs acid to react, and a chocolate cake made with Dutch-processed cocoa has had its natural acidity neutralised. A tablespoon of vinegar restores it, the reaction produces carbon dioxide, and the cake rises. It is the same principle behind old wartime cakes made without eggs. The source names a specific caramel brand, which has been described generically.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Set the oven to 350°F / 180°C and line two cake tins.
- 2
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl. Mix in the sugar and salt, breaking up any lumps.
- 3
In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, oil, melted butter, vinegar, vanilla essence and marula cream flavour together until well blended.
- 4
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix with a whisk or an electric hand mixer on medium-low until blended. The batter will look thick and somewhat dry at this stage, which is correct.
- 5
Pour in the hot coffee gradually, in two stages, beating until the batter is smooth and evenly combined. It will loosen considerably.
- 6
Divide the batter between the tins and bake for 30 to 33 minutes, until the cakes spring back when pressed gently and a skewer comes out clean.
- 7
Cool in the tins on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then turn out and cool completely.
- 8
For the icing, whip the cream and fold it through the caramel, then chill until firm enough to spread.
- 9
Layer and cover the cooled cakes with the caramel cream.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from keamogetswemotlhale- Use the coffee hot. That is what dissolves the cocoa properly, and it is the difference between a good chocolate cake and a dusty one.
- You will not taste coffee. Half a cup in a cake this size deepens the chocolate rather than flavouring it.
- Do not leave out the vinegar. It provides the acid that bicarbonate of soda needs to react, and without it the cake will not rise properly.
- Cool the cakes completely before icing. Warm cake melts a cream-based icing straight off the layers.
- Chill the caramel cream until it is firm enough to hold its shape. Whipped cream folded into caramel is slack at first.
- Marula cream flavour is a southern African ingredient. Leave it out if you cannot find it; the cake works without.
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