Life of Lydia: Baking Diary: Happy Grizz Chocolate Cake for My Boyfriend

My boyfriend's birthday was around the corner, so I decided to make one of his favourite cakes, chocolate cake. I struggled for a long time on the design of the cake. He likes Manchester United, but it is too hard for me to draw out the logo. At last, I had chosen the design of Grizz from We bare bears, which is not too simple yet is easy to handle.

First, I made a chocolate sponge cake as the base.

To make a chocolate sponge cake, you will need:

Ingredient (A)

4 egg yolk (room temperature)
1/4 tsp salt
50g caster sugar
50g corn oil
70ml milk (i use full cream milk)
100g superfine flour
20g cocoa powder/chocolate powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda

Ingredient (B)

4 egg white (room temperature)
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
60g caster sugar

This recipe is for a 9-inch round cake. Line the cake pan with parchment paper beforehand.

1. Mix the egg yolks with salt and caster sugar until the mixture is creamy. Then add corn oil and milk to the mixture, beat well after each addition.

2. Mix all the dry ingredients (superfine flour, chocolate powder, baking powder, baking soda) and shieve them into the egg yolk mixture. Then set it aside.

3. Moving to Ingredients B, use low speed to beat until the egg white is bubbly. Add cream of tartar to the egg white and continue beating. The, add caster sugar in three additions. Whip until they reach stiff peaks. Watch these stages carefully, because if you over-beat the egg whites, the stretched protein will break and let the water in the whites out, creating a really unappetizing mix of eggy water and foam.

4. Transfer the egg white mixture into egg yolk mixture in three additions. Gently fold them using a spatula after each addition. After mixing well, transfer the final mixture into the cake pan. Gently tap the cake pan on the table to remove big air bubbles.

5. Bake the cake in the oven at 160°C for 25 minutes, then continue baking at 180°C for 15 minutes. remember to preheat the oven beforehand.

6. Place the cake upside down on a wire rack after it is done. Remove the parchment paper and leave it cool.

After that, I used a wire cake slicer to slice the cake into three parts. I turned the bottom piece upside down so that the cake will have a flat base.

Next, time to prepare the frosting cream! To make the cream, I whipped 500ml whipping cream with 100g icing sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla essence. The cream was done when they were whipped until stiff peaks. To make it chocolate colour, I added some chocolate colouring and folded with a spatula to avoid overbeating.

I sprinkled a generous amount of chocolate chips on each layer after spreading a thick layer of cream. Finally, I covered the whole cake with a thick layer of cream and spreaded it evenly and smoothly with a frosting knife.