Deeply Dark Devil's Food Cake

I bought this book off Amazon some time ago and been flipping the pages on a daily basis, making mental bookmark on what I wanted to bake from this book. I have heard rave reviews on all Tish's cake and saw a few recipes that call for sour creams! That will be later.

Decided to go with a simple and quick chocolate cake so I chose Deeply Dark Devil's Food Cake as my maiden cake from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book! No regrets..the cake was extremely soft due to the amount of liquid used.

However, I made a boo boo when I converted the temperature wrongly and before I realise it, the cake 'exploded' on top. My heart sank and broke. I used my bought-long-time-never-used heart shaped pan for this cake. Ahh.. I shall attempt this cake again next time.

Note that the recipe below is for half portion as  the full recipe will yield a pretty tall cake - family of 2 adults and 2 kids cannot finish such big cake. =)

Deeply Dark Devil's Food Cake by Tish Boyle
(half recipe)

- 106g all-purpose flour*
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp + 1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1/4 tsp + 1/8 tsp of salt
- 78g unsalted butter, room temperature
- 150g sugar (I reduced it to 120g)
- 31g cocoa powder (I used Valrhona cocoa powder)
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 160ml warm water

* I do not have all-purpose flour, so I substituted it with self-raising flour and I omitted baking powder and salt.

How?
- Grease the bottom and side of your cake pan generously and dust with flour.
- Preheat oven to 325F or 160C.
- Sift flour and bicarbonate of soda together and whisk till well blended. Set aside.
- In a clean bowl, beat butter at medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute.
- Gradually add the sugar and beat at high speed until the mixture is pale and we; blended, about 3 minutes.
- Add cocoa powder and beat at medium speed for 1 minute. using a spatula, scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
- Beat in the egg followed by vanilla extract.
- Turn your mixer to low speed, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating it with warm water in two additions. That is flour, water, flour, water and flour.
- Scrape down the side of the bowl and mix at low speed for 30 seconds.
- Pour the batter into prepared pan and smooth the top.
- Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes.
- Remove the side of the pan and invert the cake onto the rack. Let it cool completely.

Bon appetit!