Cake making

Chocolate sponge cake. By Lee Davison.

Introduction.

This is the recipe for a basic chocolate sponge. After it's done it is up to you to add decoration, jam, cream or whatever you want, to, on, or in it.

Ingredients.

1 Big bar (200g) Cadbury's Bournville dark chocolate.
6 large eggs.
6 oz (170g) of plain flour.
8 oz (225g) of caster sugar.
8 oz (225g) of butter.¹
1 Guano Apes - 'Proud like a god' CD²

Method.

Put the Guano Apes CD on your CD player, select 'Repeat' and 'Shuffle' then press 'Play'. Adjust the volume so you can hear it in the kitchen, but not so loud it's going to annoy the neighbours.

Put the oven on to heat up, about 150^o will do if you have a TURBO OVEN like I do or 180^o for a more sane, normally aspirated, oven type.

Start melting the chocolate on a low heat. If you haven't melted chocolate before then go look here.

Cream the butter and the sugar in a bowl. It's at this point you realise you should have taken the butter out of the fridge about four bloody hours ago. How do I know? Guess. So if you didn't you can leave it in the oven for a few minutes and they can both warm up.

Separate the egg whites and yolks, leave the whites in a bowl to whisk later but keep the yolks handy, you'll need them soon. You can do this with one of those clever egg separator thingies, I used my fingers.

Seive the 6 oz of plain flower into another bowl. And no, I didn't weight the seive. These scales are clever and can show you how much more something weighs.

About now the chocolate should be melted, if not you can give it a bit of a stir until it is.

At this point, the book I was following said..
"..then quickly beat in the melted chocolate until evenly mixed."
and had a picture of chocolate being poured with one hand, and beaten in with an electric food mixer with the other. Two problems here, first I don't have enough hands to spoon hot melted chocolate and hold a food mixer (let alone photograph it all as well), and second, my electric food mixer has long since gone the way of the Dodo.
So what you do is make a crater in the butter/sugar mix, spoon in all the chocolate as quickly as possible and then stir like hell. It seemed to work.

Now you need to beat in the flour and egg yolks. Do a little of each in turn, i.e. some flour, a yolk, some flour, a yolk, until it's all mixed in.

Now whisk the egg whites to a peak (instructions here) and then gently fold³ into the mixture.

Spread the mixture evenly in a lightly greased 8" (20cm) cake tin and place in your pre heated oven for about 1 hour 45 minutes or until a knife poked into the middle of the cake comes out moist but clean. This time is for my TURBO OVEN at 150^o, I guess baking in a sane oven at 180^o would be quicker.

Remove from the oven and leave until it's not so sodding hot. You can then turn it out from the tin⁴ and leave it to cool on a wire tray.

The bit they never mention in the cook books is the washing up.

Out takes.

Why a TURBO OVEN may not be a good thing.
Look what I found.

[1] We're making a cake ferchrissakes! This is no time to be worrying about your cholesterol levels.
[2] This bit probably isn't essential but I find it helps.
[3] Use a big spoon and sort of turn it round and round.
[4] It's now you realise 'non-stick' isn't, and that you should have greased it after all.

Last page update: 6th July, 2003.

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Put the Guano Apes CD on your CD player, select 'Repeat' and 'Shuffle' then press 'Play'. Adjust the volume so you can hear it in the kitchen, but not so loud it's going to annoy the neighbours.
Put the oven on to heat up, about 150^o will do if you have a TURBO OVEN like I do or 180^o for a more sane, normally aspirated, oven type.
Start melting the chocolate on a low heat. If you haven't melted chocolate before then go look here.
Cream the butter and the sugar in a bowl. It's at this point you realise you should have taken the butter out of the fridge about four bloody hours ago. How do I know? Guess. So if you didn't you can leave it in the oven for a few minutes and they can both warm up.
Separate the egg whites and yolks, leave the whites in a bowl to whisk later but keep the yolks handy, you'll need them soon. You can do this with one of those clever egg separator thingies, I used my fingers.
Seive the 6 oz of plain flower into another bowl. And no, I didn't weight the seive. These scales are clever and can show you how much more something weighs.
About now the chocolate should be melted, if not you can give it a bit of a stir until it is.
At this point, the book I was following said.. *"..then quickly beat in the melted chocolate until evenly mixed."* and had a picture of chocolate being poured with one hand, and beaten in with an electric food mixer with the other. Two problems here, first I don't have enough hands to spoon hot melted chocolate and hold a food mixer (let alone photograph it all as well), and second, my electric food mixer has long since gone the way of the Dodo. So what you do is make a crater in the butter/sugar mix, spoon in all the chocolate as quickly as possible and then stir like hell. It seemed to work.

Now you need to beat in the flour and egg yolks. Do a little of each in turn, i.e. some flour, a yolk, some flour, a yolk, until it's all mixed in.

Now whisk the egg whites to a peak (instructions here) and then gently fold³ into the mixture.
Spread the mixture evenly in a lightly greased 8" (20cm) cake tin and place in your pre heated oven for about 1 hour 45 minutes or until a knife poked into the middle of the cake comes out moist but clean. This time is for my TURBO OVEN at 150^o, I guess baking in a sane oven at 180^o would be quicker.
Remove from the oven and leave until it's not so sodding hot. You can then turn it out from the tin⁴ and leave it to cool on a wire tray.
The bit they never mention in the cook books is the washing up.