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Now Chocolate Cake with butter cream and fruit & nut chocolate bar topping is a real treat & totally controlled by you, the sweetness & flavour are all in your hands and you can let your inner artist shine through with creativity when finishing the decorations! I love really dark chocolate and I'm not actually a lover of sweet things, so I use salted butter in all my desserts to offset the sweetness of the sugar. I'm using 4 Tblsp of cocoa powder to make the topping, also with salted butter — butter cream which only has 200g of icing sugar in it — most recipes call for 400g, but that's just a little too much for me. To decorate the top I've used a fruit and nut chocolate bar chopped into it's squares. I do use a blender but all can easily be done by hand with a fork and stiff whisk — just take your butter out of the fridge the night before to allow it to come to room temperature and everything will be good.

Click the Method tab below to see a step by step guide on how to make my Chocolate Cake with butter cream and chocolate bar topping.

chocolate cake 01

ingredients

Here's what you need :¬)

Cake ingriedients

  • 175g salted butter
  • 175g granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 170g plain flour
  • 2 Tblsp baking powder
  • 4 Tblsp cocoa powder
  • 1 to 2 Tblsp milk

Butter cream

  • 200g softened salted butter
  • 200g icing sugar
  • 4 Tblsp cocoa powder
  • 2 Tblsp milk
  • 1/2 - 1 tsp vanilla extract

Topping decoration

  • 85g bar of fruit & nut chocolate cut into squares

method

Well, here we go! Ready to make this stunning not too sweet! chocolatey treat. I've split making this super delicious Chocolate Cake into 3 stages:

  • Make the cake
  • Make the butter cream
  • Assemble the Chocolate Cake

So, get all your ingredients out, weighed and ready to go:

cake ingredients
ingredients for cake mix
butter cream ingredients
ingredients for butter cream

Method for cake

  1. Get all your cake ingriedients out and weighed
  2. Pre-heat your oven to 180c
  3. Line a loose bottomed tin* with grease-proof paper
  4. Blend the butter & sugar together
  5. Add the eggs combine
  6. Add the flour, baking powder & cocoa
  7. Blend the mix again
  8. Add the milk** depending on how wet the mixture looks: 1 or 2 Tblsp
  9. Blend again
  10. Pour the cake batter into your prepared tin & place into the hot oven for 45 minutes

*A loose bottom tin is a round baking tin that the bottom comes out of to make it easy to remove the baked cake. Alternatively, you can use two shallower cake tins to make each half separately. Just make sure you grease the tins and line them with baking/grease-proof paper.

**In summer you will need less milk as the butter will be softer, in winter you may need more.

Method for butter cream

So, Chocolate Cake in the oven, we can move on to the butter cream:

  1. Get all your butter cream ingriedients out and weighed
  2. Combine all the dry ingriedients into a powder
  3. Add the butter & cream the mixture until it's smooth
  4. Add the milk & vanilla extract — combine again
  5. Set aside until your cake's cooked & cooled

Cake assembly

I used a single tin so now I need to slice the cake through the center and spread half my butter cream over the half that I'm using for the base.

  1. Carefully slice the cake into two disks
  2. Chop the chocolate bar into squares to decorate
  3. Choose one disk for the bottom of the cake
  4. Spread half the butter cream onto the base disk
  5. Put the other half of the cake on top
  6. Spread the rest the of butter cream on the top*
  7. Put the last blob of cream in the center
  8. Decorate with the chocolate squares

* As you spread the butter cream, lift the knife as you go to create pretty peaks :¬P

chocolate cake...
chocolate cake 01
...with butter cream and fruit & nut chocolate bar topping

Now all we need is some small people, forks, cups of tea and all those eager eyes will magically appear!

Here I made a special treat for my grandchildren at easter:-

chocolate cake...
chocolate cake for easter
a super special
for the kids
chocolate cake for easter sliced
...an easter treat!