Best Chocolate Cake & Cupcake Recipe

One thing I love is when you get a hold of a recipe that is so good that it's your "go to" recipe and it turns out the same every time, soft, fluffy and moist.  I have two recipes that I would like to share with you and the first one is a "Chocolate Cake Recipe" that my sister gave me a few years ago and the second one is a "Vanilla Cup Cake Recipe" that Christine from "Slow Living Essentials" posted on her blog back in August.

Chocolate Cake Recipe

Ingredients

            185 gms Butter (soft)

            2 Teaspoons of Vanilla Essence

            1 ¾ cups of Caster Sugar

            3 eggs

2 cups of Self Raising Flour

2/3^rdS cup of Cocoa

1 cup of water

Method

1.            Heat oven to 180 degrees (170 degrees fan forced)

2              Mix all ingredients together in electric mixer for 5 minutes

            Cooking times depends on what cake tin you use.  ie Muffin Tins, Mini Muffins, Cake Tins etc. Check with skewer method to see if cake is cooked.  Make sure you leave the cake in the cake tins to fully cool down in the tin as the cake is a light soft cake and if you take it out too soon it could fall apart, at least an hour.  The Muffins and Mini Muffins should cool in tins as well but it's not so delicate with these as the large cakes are and once cooled in 10 minutes they can be taken out and eaten - YUM.

This recipe cannot be halved because it has 3 eggs however it is a large mix so you can make two cakes round, heart, bar etc. or muffins or mini muffins or a mixture of everything.  One cake, muffins and mini muffins like I did on Saturday.  This cake freezes very well and it delicious with or without icing and/or just a dusting of icing sugar.  Once you make this cake you will find yourself making this recipe over and over again.  Cooking times obviously depend on whether it's cake or a muffin or a mini muffin tin.  The cakes do take a long time to cook depending upon your tin and could take up to an hour if it's a big tin.  Just keep an eye on it however the muffins and mini muffins are the usual 10-15 minutes like normal but the cake does take a long time to cook.  I just set my iPhone timer on for 5 or 10 minutes so I keep coming back after half an hour to check on the progress of the cake.

Easy Cupcakes

The recipe is posted over at Christine's blog "Slow Living Essentials" and it is a beautiful cupcake and soft because you use a little bit of pure cream in it.  If you like cupcakes you must give this one a try as it's delicious.  The recipe is at the bottom of Christine's post and it's our favourite vanilla cupcake recipe in this household.....soooo soft I can taste them now.

I can't find the photo of the cakes we made however Christine has a photo on her blog.  Have a go at making these as they are excellent.