I have never found chocolate cake as good as my mum’s. Actually it’s my grandmother’s recipe, and a great one at that.
I didn’t know until I asked mum for the recipe that it’s a “boiled” cake. You don’t actually boil it to cook it - but you simmer some of the ingredients before making the final mix.
According to family lore, Nana used to make this cake for stockmen when she was a cook on a cattle station. I don’t know whether the boiling has anything to do with it, but the cake is said to hold up well and not fall apart while being jostled around in saddlebags. As far as I can remember it always survived the trip to school in my lunchbox.
The cake is moist, tasty and seems to keep well in a sealed container. It’s not chocolate overload by any means - no doubt you could tweak the recipe by boosting the cocoa content. Or jack it up by making your own superchockified version of Lenny’s butter icing.
But I’m not one to go against family tradition, and past cake failures have made me even more reticent to mess around with recipes (longtime viewers will recall the Sponge Blob Square Pan disaster).
This episode really should have taken place in a different time, on a different continent. I wanted to use Nana’s recipe for Lenny’s birthday cake while we were on the road in Canada. Unfortunately in far northern Nova Scotia we couldn’t get the ingredients.
But I managed to find some packet cake mix and went to work with my new Outback oven, a flameproof hood that fits over a pot on our Whisperlite stove. It was a bit of a disaster; the pot was the wrong size and the bottom of the cake had burned black by the time the top was cooked and the smoke made us firmly unpopular in the campground cooking shelter. Using a serrated knife, I neatly sliced the charred disc off the bottom and served the remaining three-fifths or so with Lenny’s butter icing.
I will give Nana’s cake a try on the Whisperlite out in the wilderness at some stage. After all, back in her day all she had was a wood-fired oven.
- Waz.
Let the jelly roll: Swiss roll recipe from Waz’s Nana
Duck in for Christmas
Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast
No-fuss fish pie
Classic bolognese
Portuguese custard tarts (pasteis de nata)
About the soufflé
One chicken, three ways
Bones about it: Beef stock from scratch
Heart-melting chocolate pudding
Project Benedict
Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls
Pulling a rarebit out of the hat
We Did It All For The Gnocchi - Again
How To Eat An Island
Great show guys! I like how you always just keep going on no matter what, instead of redoing the whole thing like most cooking shows. Oh, and all the best recipes take that much butter.
Love the podcasts! I have to know, did you go back and add milk to the frosting mix? My grandma used a 4:1:1 ratio of powdered sugar, milk and butter, plus vanilla to taste.
Uum, looks yummy!!! Like to taste. Looks like a room heater in the background YAY. Queenslander.
Hey Dave,
No, we didn’t add any milk. If we had, it would be in the video! Thanks for the mixture ratio, we might try that next time.
Waz.
Cake looks really good. Are you guys still using the h264 codec though? I noticed the video quality wasn’t that great this time.
The cake looks great. Nice episode guys!
Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had in years. I actually had tears rolling down my cheeks from laughing so hard.
Somehow there was a human, realness to what I was seeing that touched my soul. Whenever some form of media, be it film, music, video or literature, whatever, unexpectedly brings forth any emotion, it’s magic and I cherish those rare moments.
Thanks again. This was the first of your vPods that I have seen but I will watch more.
How are you two finding London? Nice place, visited there recently, though it’s the only time I’ve done so, despite living only 120 miles from there.
First show I’ve seen from you, thanks to iTunes vodcasting, and after seeing it, downloaded practically the whole backlog of shows, and have even copied your recipe for steak and ale pie. Incidentally, I had a similar problem to you, my gravy was a little too thin, however most of it had boiled away, so it actually worked fine, a thin liquer of gravy with a rather potent flavour.
This cake, however, I have not yet tried, I once tried to make a ’simple’ victoria sponge and, like you, had problems with it remaining liquid. I did, however learn some tricks from the experience, even if I’ve not managed to make one. When you open the open, even by a little bit, the temperature can drop as much as a 100 degrees in a short space of time, depending on how high it was to begin with, when baking a cake, that can make the difference between a well-cooked cake, or a stodgy mess. (Thats a hint from my own mother, who definitely has the cake thing down.)
could you post that recipe. It looks really good. I want to make it.
I was confused as to what “bicarbonate of sodium” is?
In the U.S. we have Baking Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) you siad it was no that…
and we have Baking Powder (Corn starch, Bicarbonate of Soda, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate..)
So for “U.S.” viewers it is Baking Powder
Actually no, Dave, this recipe uses baking SODA. In my native Australia we sometimes call this “bicarbonate of soda” or “bicarb”. As you point out, baking POWDER is similar but different.
It’s essential to get this right or you’ll end up with a very nasty chocolate blob.
Waz.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Like the 2 Fat Ladies, one has to wonder: is this a cooking show or a sitcom. I think I just gave my heart an extra year from laughing so hard!!!
The self-rising flour contains baking powder. Bicarbonate of soda, sodium bicarbonate and baking soda are all names for the same thing.
Baking powder typically contains baking soda, cream of tartar and a filling agent.
Where baking soda is used as the leavening agent, it is mixed with an acidic ingredient to produce carbon dioxide. This can be vinegar, sour cream, buttermilk, citrus juice etc and, I believe, cocoa.
Great video. Now I am hungry!
Fun fun fun…You guys are great!….I cook for a living 50hrs a week and just love watching your videos ….I get more inspired by non-pro cooks than my co-workers lol
I just finished my 2nd video last week and I know the time and effort it takes…great job….and you ought to stick with the mp4 format like on the Itunes podcast cause its such a better compression….I tried them all and thats my favourite…cheers guys.
I never bother with chocolate cake recipes that aren’t boiled, as you say. The cocoa needs to be mixed with a warm liquid in order to “bloom” - release its full flavor.
i like what i see would u mind giving the recipe
if not just send me a peace of that cake
very very funny!
Great site! I just checked it out after reading about you in last week’s Time magazine. You must be getting a gazillion hits… Choc cake looks yummy!
That cake looks lovely!I wish I could make cake as yummys as that.;)
i seem to be going back in time with the recipes i follow.
anyway, i had a reason to celebrate, my engagement, sort of, you know, we went to the ’standesamt’ and had a paper signed, that everything is fine and we could get married in summer.
where was i? ah - so i had reason to celebrate and was very keen on having some dessert wine and needed a dessert to go with it. so i made this cake, and being far to lazy to look up sodium bicarb or whatever it was, i just tipped in some baking powder. i also tipped in a generous amount of brandy, ginger and cinnamon.
what can i say, it turned out absolutely beautiful. though it didn’t go too well with the wine, it was far to honey-y and caramel-y (2004 chardonnay eiswein from austria).
i served the cake with orange (moro) filets and whipped cream, leaving out the icing, because i don’t like icing much. the cinnamon flavour was a little too strong, the brandy could have been stronger.
so, another great recipe! easy and quick to do, if not to bake, stores well, looks good. i always seem to make them cakes. i should do more of the meat stuff… anyway, thank you again, for lots of fun in the kitchen and ‘Ã table’.
cheers!
Congrats guys really impressed. Haven’t made the cake yet but am about to give it a try. Looks absolutely fabulous. Will let you know how it goes. p.s. added up all your cooking times it added up to 1 hour and 20 mins. Where about in Aussy are you. I am in the Tuna City of Port Lincoln South Australia.
Hi Jenny, we’re Aussies from Queensland but we live in London these days. Take our recommendation, it’s a great cake - I grew up with that recipe and look how I turned out!
Waz and Lenny.
Did the cake still stay Chocolate-y even with just 2 tablespoons of cocoa?? Coz’ most recipies use at lease a quarter cup or half a cup?
Hi there Christine, this is not a really super-mega-chocolatey cake, like a mudcake or something, but we like it this way.