Ultra Moist Chocolate Cake with Nutella Icing

It was a pretty full-on week last week; we just celebrated Chackochi’s first birthday last weekend. I still can’t believe my baby is 1!  The party deserves a post on its own and so I’ll put them up once I get my hands on the party pics.

We had a small family celebration on his actual birthday, 10^th July and then a full on party for all friends and family in the weekend. I made two cakes, one for Chackochi’s kindy and one for the family do. The lighting was not too good when I took the pic, so that's not the actual color of the icing.. Its more like the next picture below.

I baked the cake and made the icing and even managed to decorate it a bit. I was absolutely proud of the results. Let me make it clear, I’m no baker. I’m pretty much a novice when it comes to baking and decorating cakes and so if I can do it, anyone can J I also made the mini bunting on top of the cakes! So simple to make and so much easier than trying to pipe out Lucas onto the cake with icing. The one on the left is a 9" cake and the one on the right is a 2 layered 8"cake.

Both my cake recipes are from Maria's Menu and both cakes received a lot of praise, so I’m pretty sure these recipes are keepers! For kindy, I made the ultra-moist chocolate cake with Nutella icing and for the family do I made the Chocolate cake with Nutella Icing.

The Ultra moist chocolate cake, as its name suggests it extremely moist and so, not so good for layering. But this is my favorite chocolate cake recipe. I’m yet to taste a chocolate cake that tops this one. All my boys love this cake and it’s usually gone within hours of coming out of the oven! J

I sadly did not click any pictures of a sliced piece so you could see how it looked on the inside. Maybe next time! But I've loads of pics of the cakes and muffins I've made with this recipe… So you now realize how often I make this at home. So much that I know this recipe by heart!!!! 

 And then this awesome cake when topped with Nutella chocolaty goodness takes it to a whole new level! It was like dying and going to chocolate heaven! J I promise you, your family will love you forever and will beg for more!

I've followed Maria’s recipe to the ‘T’. It’s come out perfect every time so I haven’t needed to change anything with the recipe.

Ultra Moist Chocolate Cake with Nutella Icing

Recipe Source: Maria's Menu

For Cake:

Ingredients:

• Milk – 1½ cups
• Butter – 100 gms
• Oil – ¼ cup (See notes)
• Cocoa Powder – ½ cup 
• Self-Rising Flour – 1 cup (See notes)
• Egg – 1 beaten, room temp
• Baking Soda – ½ tsp
• Sugar – 1 cup + 2 tbsp

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease your cake tin well & dust with flour or cocoa powder. 
2. Heat together milk, butter, oil & cocoa powder until the butter melts. It does not need to boil. Keep aside and let it cool to room temperature.
3. Sift flour, baking soda and sugar. Add in the beaten egg & the wet ingredients to the flour mix. Mix well.
4. Pour the batter into your greased and floured cake pan. I doubled the recipe to get a 9 inch cake for the birthday cake. 
5. Bake for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. My cakes are usually ready around the 20-25 mins mark.Cool cakes in the pans for about 10 minutes, then transfer to cooling rack(s) to cool completely. 

For Icing:

• Unsalted butter – 250 gms, softened
• Nutella – 440 gms
• Icing sugar – 2 cups
• Milk – 1 tbsp

Beat butter until smooth. Add Nutella and beat together until thoroughly combined. Slowly add powdered sugar, mixing until combined. Add 1 tablespoon of milk. Add additional milk or powdered sugar as needed to reach desired consistency.

I did a crumb coat first on the cake and left in the fridge for a couple of hours to set before I did my final coating of icing and decorations.

Notes: 

• I used Canola Oil, whereas in the original recipe I think Maria used Sunflower Oil.
• Maria's suggestion for Substitution for self raising flour – to get 1 cup self-raising flour, add 1½ tsp baking powder+ ¼ tsp salt to 1 cup all purpose flour. 
• I doubled the recipe to get a 9 inch cake. Otherwise this would usually give me an 8" cake and about 3 cupcakes.