This is the first in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old. You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here
Recipe number one in my little black book of cakes and biscuits is an odd one for a Viennese Chocolate Cake. Odd, I say, because it has crushed cornflakes scattered over the top. I don't know that much about traditional Austrian cooking but I'm pretty sure there weren't a lot of crushed cornflakes floating around the kitchens. So I'm not at all sure what makes this cake particularly Viennese, but I did find that I was humming The Blue Danube for most of the day that I made this cake and thinking of the Viennese Waltz, which one might dance to this beautiful music. In fact, I am listening to it now via YouTube. Click here and you can also listen to it while you read the rest of this post if you like (just open it in another tab so you read and listen at the same time). I'll wait a moment while you organise it................................................Oh, and please excuse me while I change fonts. Right, here we go.
Viennese Chocolate Cake
125g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
2 cups self-raising flour, sifted (I use plain flour with 4tsp baking powder - 1 tsp to each 1/2 cup flour)
1 tsp instant coffee
1/2 tsp vanilla extract or essence
1/2 cup milk
60g chocolate
For the topping:
60g butter
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup caster sugar
3/4 cup lightly crushed cornflakes
1 tsp cinnamon
For the Mocha Cream:
300ml cream
1/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp instant coffee
1/2 tsp vanilla
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celcius / 375 Fahrenheit, making suitable adjustments if you have a fan-forced oven, which I don't. Grease and line the bases of 2 x 8" (20cm) sandwich tins.
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. If the butter is too hard, I sit the bowl in an inch or two of hot water in the sink for a couple of minutes to soften the butter a little but just make sure the tap is turned away from the bowl so it can't drip into the butter and sugar mix. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition
Chop up the chocolate roughly and melt it in a heatproof bowl over simmering water. When it is completely melted, add it to the cake mixture along with the instant coffee. I made the mistake of using granulated coffee without dissolving it in hot water first. I actually put it in with the melting chocolate, thinking the heat would dissolve the granules. It didn't, so I got little grains of coffee in my cake. While it wasn't a big mistake, next time I would dissolve it in 1/2 a teaspoon of boiling water or, if you're not big on instant coffee, you could use a teaspoon or so of a really strong espresso shot and enjoy drinking the rest.
Now fold in the sifted flour, alternately with the milk. You should end up with a fairly thick-ish cake batter. Divide the mixture between the two sandwich tins. I didn't have any of these so used a couple of 22cm cake tins which meant my cakes were not as high as they should have been. I will have to buy some sandwich tins though as quite a lot of the recipes in this book seem to call for them. Make up the topping according the instructions below and sprinkle over one of the cakes.
Bake the plain cake for 30-35 minutes and the cake with topping for 45-50 minutes. Leave to cool a few minutes in the tins before turning out on wire racks. The cake with topping is a little tricky as the crumbly bits wanted to drop off so it had to be done very quickly and deftly. Leave them to cool completely then refrigerate several hours or overnight. I imagine that the intention here is that the cakes would be wrapped in plastic wrap before they're put in the fridge. Instead, I wrapped them in tea-towels and left them in the pantry overnight..
Slice the cakes carefully in half so you end up with four layers. Sandwich them together with the Mocha Cream, keeping the layer with topping for the top (of course!). Spread the sides of the cake with Mocha Cream also then chill before serving. This last point about chilling the cake is well worth observing. We cut into ours straight away and it was quite dry and disappointing. However, after it had been left a few hours it was much, much better. The cake had absorbed some moisture from the Mocha Cream (don't know why I feel compelled to give that capital letters) and it was quite delicious. The next day it was still very good but the crunchy topping had lost some of it's crunch.
To make the topping:
Combine walnuts, sugar, cornflakes and cinnamon in a bowl. Melt butter and mix gently into dry ingredients.
To make the Mocha Cream:
Combine all ingredients in a bowl, stirring gently but do not beat. This time I did dissolve the coffee granules in a tiny bit of hot water (1/2 tsp) and it worked beautifully. Chill for several hours or overnight (while the cake is also resting) then beat until well thickened.
What's to like about this cake:
- I liked that it used melted chocolate instead of cocoa in the cake. It was an interesting way of making a chocolate cake that I hadn't come across before.
- I also liked that is was, despite the fanciness of the name, quite a basic cake to make but it produced something that looks a little bit special.
What's not to like:
- I had to be a bit more organised than usual (not my strong point) to put this all together as components had to be made and then left for several hours. I am generally inclined to choose recipes that can be made up and eaten almost immediately. Even waiting for cakes to cool down to be iced can sometimes be too much as little hands will be picking bits off the edges as soon as the cake hits the cooling rack.
- I ended up making the cake and the mocha cream in the evening so they could sit overnight and be ready for morning tea the next day. Otherwise, they would need to be made early in the morning to be ready for afternoon tea or dessert. Not too much of a hardship altogether really, just a bit of time management.
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