Rich Creamy Chocolate Cake

It has been so long since I last baked - I almost forgot when. I missed baking so much - felt as though a big part of me missing when I don't bake. The reason I have no mood nowadays to bake is because there's just two of us - and it's boring to indulge/devour the cakes all by ourselves. The more the merrier - so, this time around, I was excited to bake a cake for a Deepavali lunch gathering among Alfred's colleague tomorrow. Finally, I used our beloved Kenwood mixer for the first time ever since we bought it - and I love the mixer!

I decided to take the short-cut to baking this time - since I couldn't find cake flour in Tesco, I bought the instant chocolate cake mix instead - and decided to add frosting to the cake. So, herewith is the recipe:

Ingredients for the cake:

Pillsbury moist supreme chocolate cake mix (517 gm)

300 ml water

80 ml oil

3 eggs

Steps:

1. Heat oven to 175 degrees Celcius.

2. Grease 2 pans with butter and dust with cocoa powder.

2. Mix cake mix, water, oil and eggs in a large bowl at low speed until moistened. Beat the mixture 2 minutes at high speed until everything is well combined.

3. Divide the batter into half and pour it into the 2 greased cake pans.

4. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cake is done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

5. Cool in pan on cooling rack for about 1 hour.

6. Remove the cake from the pan and place it on a flat pan for frosting.

7. Frost when the cakes are completely cool.

Ingredients for the frosting:

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup cocoa powder

3 tbsp castor sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

Steps:

1. Melt the butter over a double boiler.

2. Whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth.

3. Add castor sugar.

4. Add milk and whisk to spreading consistency. Add small amount of additional milk, if needed.

5. Take off the heat.

6. Stir in vanilla essence.

7. Spread the frosting over the 1st layer of cake and cover with another layer. Cover the top and sides of the cake with frosting.

8. Best to refrigerate overnight.