Of Chocolate Fudge Cakes and Goa

I have this friend Sweta (read Sweta and NOT Shweta, else she will kill you). She hails from Goa, which is not just fun and frolic land as all tourists think it is, but it is a land of great local food, which symbolizes experimentation at its best. One has to sample just the fish and prawn curries to understand what I am trying to say (unfortunately, no restaurant targeting tourists serves that kind of food). Main course apart, I have this recipe of Chocolate Fudge Cake that Sweta was gracious enough to share. Its an interesting one, especially for all the little trade secrets that she gave out (for which I am grateful to her). So people take down the recipe and share your experience.

 

Parts List

125 g unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2/3 cup dark cocoa

2 tsp vinegar

1 cup milk

1.75 cup maida

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

Procedure

1. beat butter until creamy. then add sugar and beat until light. then egg yolks - one at a time, one completely mixed in before adding the second.

2. bloom cocoa in a little hot water and mix in slowly to paste. mix until room temperature and then slowly add to butter-eggs-sugar mixture.

3. split the milk by adding the vinegar.

4. sieve together maida, baking powder, bicarb and salt. sift three times.

5. beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, add vanilla.

6. mix split milk, powders and butter cream together, adding powder and milk alternately until everything is combined. then fold in the beaten egg whites.

7. bake at 180 celsius for 30 minutes or until done.

Tricks

1. replace part of the cocoa with instant coffee.

2. replace part (or all) of the sugar with brown sugar. the more brown you use, the softer the cake.

3. use regular salted butter and eliminate the 1 tsp salt to get a non-sweet cake. this is better if you want to soak it in rum as a base for black forest.

4. this combination will yield a gooey cake. for the best outcome, use hershey's cocoa. cadbury's sucks in comparison to hershey's. or if you're using cooking chocolate, measure melted and reduce milk proportionately.