Mocha Sponge Cake

Birthday time again. For the past 5+ years, I haven't given birthday gifts to any of my immediate family, but I've baked the cake. Likewise again this year, I baked the cake for my Dad's birthday.

"This is the sort of cake that people label "very rich" but then go on to have three slices with languorous ease" 

I read this in Nigella Lawson's recipe of butterscotch layer cake, and I was so sure this was the one to make. Then I remembered that there'd be about 15+ people that day and 3 slices each would be a lot of cake to bake!

Anyway, I did quite a bit of alterations to this recipe. Firstly, I omitted the butterscotch, which basically left me with 2 layers of sponge cake. In the recipe she mentions a variation of using espresso powder with the cake flour. Sounded exciting, so I did a variation of her variation and added a mocha icing to the sponge cake.

So. VERY simple sponge cake recipe. It took me about 6 minutes! Put 225g soft butter, 125g brown sugar, 100g castor sugar, 4 eggs, 225g flour into the food processor and blitz till smooth. 

NOTE: Another variation to her recipe- I put in 225g of castor sugar + 2 tbs of honey and omitted the brown sugar (basically, I didn't have any!) 

Once smooth, add 3-4 tbsp of cream and mix again.

Divide the batter into 2 round buttered and floured tins and bake for 30mins in 180 degrees. Let them cool completely before icing.

Mocha Icing- (apologies for not including any accurate measurements) Melt dark chocolate (I think I used about 100g) and butter (maybe about 80g) over a double boiler. Once melted and cooled add lots (maybe about 1 cup or more) of icing sugar and whisk away till smooth. Add more icing sugar if necessary. Add espresso powder/chicory coffee essence.

NOTE: I didn't realize that the espresso powder I had was actually just ground coffee beans and I should have made a decoction of it and strained it instead of directly adding it to the icing. So, make a coffee decoction (about 50 ml) and add to the icing. If too runny, add more icing sugar and whisk again. 

Then place one layer on the cake plate, slice top to even the surface. Be generous with the icing, there's more than enough. Place 2nd layer on top and cover the entire cake with icing. 

NOTE: 

1. I added butterscotch chips to the top. I initially wanted to do some fancy icing design- something that looked like this. But, I ran out of time/got lazy and settled for randomly scattered butterscotch chips on the top.

2. No one could taste the honey. I couldn't either. 

Eat with vanilla ice-cream or cream. :)

This picture was taken by my brother