Finally, FINALLY, I have made a sponge cake that has risen. I've always had a problem with sponge cakes (bar lemon cakes, for some reason). Anything larger than a fairy cake usually ends up like a dense brittle biscuit.
BUT NOT TODAY!!! TODAY, I HAVE MADE THIS!!!
And before I forget how I did it, I'm going to write it down. I got the recipe from a friend of mine, and clearly she knew something I didn't.
Ingredients for cake
3 eggs
Self raising flour
Caster sugar
Margarine
Cocoa
For icing
Icing sugar
Cocoa
Margarine
Dark chocolate
1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ Gas Mark 4
2) Weigh your eggs, still in the shell. Remember that weight, because that's how much you'll need of everything else (this was my mistake before. I used to measure the other ingredients by rote instead of matching them to the eggs each time).
3) Weigh and mix your 'wet' ingredients, the eggs and margarine, and the sugar. It will look like mush.
4) Weigh the flour, but replace about 3/4 oz of it with cocoa. When you add it to the mixture, don't swirl it in with the spoon, fold it in, in stages.
5) Fold in one teaspoon of boiled water.
6) Bake for about 30 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.
7) For the icing, mix together the icing sugar/cocoa and margarine in a 2:1 ration to make buttercream. Then mix in a few lines of melted dark chocolate. This will make the icing less tooth-rottingly sweet and more like rich fondant. Once your cake is cool, cut it across the middle and spread your icing there, then put the rest on the top.
8) EAT IT!!! OM NOM NOM!!!
