Chocolate Cake Recipe

As requested by Swahili (I'm sure you have a couple of them up your sleeves!), here is a simple recipe of a chocolate cake that I usually bake for my kids (taken from a basic cookbook). My family prefer I bake this choc cake as opposed to buying the ready made mixture from the shops. I think it might taste better as they always finish the former but not the latter.

Recipe:

125 g butter (room temperature)
125g caster sugar (half cup)
40g icing sugar (one third cup) sifted
2 eggs , lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (fresh vanilla pods would be exquisite if you can find them in the shops)
A quarter cup/80g blackberry jam
1 and a quarter cups self raising flour
Half cup/60g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
1 cup milk (full cream preferably if it is for a special occasion, skimmed milk if you're on a diet.)

Chocolate buttercream:
50g dark chocolate
25g butter
3 teaspoon cream (I usually add milk if no cream in stock)
A quarter cup /30g icing sugar, sifted

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease the base and sides of deep 20cm square cake tin and line with baking paper.


2. Beat the butter, caster sugar and icing sugar with electric beaters til light and creamy. (They don't tell you this but the butter has to be at room temperature, not straight out of the fridge.) Add the eggs gradually, beating after each addition. Add vanilla essence and jam and beat til combined.


3. Fold in combined mixture of flour , cocoa and soda alternately with milk. Stir until mixture is combined and almost smooth.


4. Pour into cake tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 45 mins or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre. Leave in tin for 15 mins , then cool on a wire rack.


5. To make the buttercream, combine the chopped chocolate , butter , cream and icing sugar in a small pan. Stir on low heat til mixture is smooth and glossy. Spread over cake with a flat knife.

Wallah!

The mystery of the disappearing fried chicken...

I had deep fried 8 pieces of chicken (ie a whole medium size chicken) the other day and left it on the dining table. After that I went upstairs to do some other things. When I came down, it was gone! I asked who ate it all up? (Silence except the sound coming from the TV ). Nobody owned up. I queried dh and he said he ate 2 pieces with the nasi lemak and sambal udang I cooked earlier. Dd is not a fan of fried chicken so that means that my 5 year old son ate the rest. I know that he really loves fried chicken but boy can he eat them... Next time I would just have to remind him how many pieces he can eat at one time.
This incident transported me back in time when I was growing up in Bangkok around my son's age. One of our house helpers was an old Thai cook who would cook fried chicken in hot chilli sauce (our family favourite) and leave it in the pot in the kitchen. Then she would go out the back to the servant quarters.
Nobody was around when I took one chicken piece from the pot and ate the flesh off it. Then I would throw the chicken bone over the fence to the next door neighbour's dog. Unfortunately, the dog was tied up and could not reach the piece of chicken. So I would get another one and throw it to him again. I think I did that many times and one of my brothers aided me until there were only a couple of pieces left in the pot. We did managed to throw a piece or two directly to the dog which he gobbled up immediately. Haha.
My mum or our helpers might have wondered who on earth ate that much chilli fried chicken that day. Not to mention, the friendly Thai next door neighbour who might have no clue where all the fried chicken bones scattered in his compound came from!