Rum and Cola Chocolate Cake

This was the first time I'd ever made one of these - It's a James Martin recipe... you know that means it's not going to be good for you!
There were several steps for making this - I don't have any photos of these yet, I was a bit rushed to get the bits together at the right time, but now I know what I'm doing (ha!) I should get some progress shots up next time I attempt it!

Rum and Cola Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

9oz self-raising flour
1oz cocoa powder
10.5 oz golden caster sugar
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs - beaten
9oz butter (I've made this twice now, and I found that marg worked better for me)
250ml cola (I guess you could use Diet, but this is a James recipe, after all...)
125ml milk
1tsp vanilla extract

(If you're wondering why I switch between imperial weights and metric liquids, it's because my measuring jug starts its imperial scale at 5 floz, which is no good for a recipe that requires 4.5 floz of milk!)

I've found at least 3 different versions of the same recipe - they seem to vary the ratio of cola and milk, and  watching James on youtube, it looks fairly flexible!

 

 Heat oven to 180oC 

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda together into a bowl.

Melt the butter and cola gently in a pan (don't bring it to a boil! It will go everywhere!)

Mix the milk, eggs and vanilla together, and mix into the dry ingredients, before adding the cola/butter mix.
Whisk gently.

Tip the mix into a greased and lined loose-based 9inch cake tin (I notice that James doesn't line his tin, but this is such a wet mix that I found it just poured straight out of the bottom of the tin)

Bake for 40-50 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

 Allow the cake to cool in the tin before removing, and placing on a cooling rack in order to remove the lining paper.

Make up a gananche to top the cake

8oz dark chocolate, broken into pieces
1oz marg
75 ml (5 tbsp ) single cream
2 tsp rum flavouring

Melt the marg into the cream in a saucepan, heat gently, but don't boil the mix.

Remove from the heat, add the rum flavouring, and the chocolate.

Stir until completely mixed and glossy.

Spread the mix over the cake.


This cake is quite delicious... extremely rich, and moist and rather more-ish!

And I've been asked to make one for a Christening!