Triple Chocolate Tray Bake

Last week N requested this cake, so of course I obliged. It's a tray bake with a chocolate sponge, white chocolate and plain chocolate pieces in it and it has buttercream and colourful chocolate dots on top. It would have had milk chocolate in it, but I picked up the wrong type of chocolate (fruit and nut) when I was shopping yesterday - cue another rant about Morrisons and their misplaced products.

I'm quite pleased with how it looked when I took it out of the oven:

It was good enough to eat then and there, however addition of the chocolate dots and buttercream gave the cake a childish birthday cake feel, I think, which I'm a fan of.

I had a piece just now and it's moist and chocolatey and delicious. I thoroughly recommend that you get your inner child out and make this ridiculously easy cake.

Yesterday's tiramisu is already half gone. Like I told you, tiramisu is definitely my favourite dessert but I'm not the only one who's been eating it after all, as some of the others got stuck into it too. Once again, I apologise for the quality of the photos, and will take better ones with my actual camera next time I bake. My HTC had many faults, as anyone who witnessed me yelling at it will verify, but at least it had a good camera, unlike my old Samsung, which it looks like I'm stuck with until my contract runs out in 2013.

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 150g Self Raising Flour
• 200g Caster Sugar
• 50g Cocoa Powder
• 2 Eggs
• 5-6tbsp Milk
• 200g Butter
• 1tsp Baking Powder
• 100g White Chocolate
• 100g Milk Chocolate
• 100g Dark/Plain Chocolate

For the topping:

• 75g Butter
• 150g Icing Sugar
• Cake Decorations

Recipe

• Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan and line a roasting tin or deep baking tray.
• Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs one at a time.
• Gradually stir in the flour, cocoa and baking powder until everything is well combined.
• Add milk, stirring well, until a soft dropping consistency has been achieved.
• Chop the chocolate into chunks and stir it into the cake mixture.
• Transfer the mixture to the baking tin and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
• Transfer the cake onto a wire rack to cool.
• Make the icing: cream the icing sugar and butter together. The mixture will go very stiff at first, but keep stirring until it softens again.
• Spread the icing over the top of the cooled cake and decorate as you like.

If any of the directions above don't make sense to you, take a look at The Basics. I'm thinking of making another page about baking on a budget to go alongside The Basics and Healthy(ish) Baking, because who knows better about budgeting than the student? To be honest, it's not much of a challenge so nobody can really use money as an excuse!

Next week, in preparation for Valentine's day, I'm going to make a suitably themed cake. Have an enjoyable week and happy baking!