My aunt used to bake the best version of this cake. Moist chocolate cake… It was one of my favourite cakes when I was a kid. In later years I forgot about it, until suddenly I woke up one day a few weeks ago and I immediately craved for this cake. It could be because I miss my aunt and five o’clock tea time in her home in Istanbul…

 

 

This is a very simple cake with very simple ingredients that you might have at home available all the time. The idea is simple too: bake the cake, make a chocolate sauce while it’s baking, then pour the sauce over the cake that is fresh out of the oven. The hardest part is to try not to eat all of it immediately in one sitting.

 

 

The cake’s sauce is medium sweet so overall sweetness of the cake is not overwhelming. But depending on your sweet tooth you may want to increase / decrease the amount of sugar in the sauce. The sauce is pretty easy to modify according to your wishes.

 

 

 

The cake is very tasty fresh however the taste develop even richer the next day, or at least even the same day if you bake it early in the morning and then eat it in the evening (again, if you can resist of course!).

 

Well, I hope you like it! Enjoy! And have a lovely midsummer!
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Ingredients:

 

Difficulty:  ★☆☆ (Easy)
(the size of my dish in this post was 20x30cm. Afterwards I once baked in another pan that was 25×35 cm in size, and it was better.)

 

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

 

For the cake:
2 cups / 4.8 dl all-purpose flour
2.5 tsp baking powder
3 heaped tbsp cacao
4 eggs
1 cup / 2.4 dl granulated white sugar
1 cup / 2.4 dl milk in room temperature
3/4 cup / 1.8 dl vegetable oil (like canola oil, but NOT olive oil) – plus a bit more to grease the cake pan
1 tsp vanilla extract

 

For the sauce:
1/2 cup / 1.2 dl vegetable oil (same as above)
1 cup / 2.4 dl milk in room temperature
3/4 cup / 1.8 dl granulated white sugar
1 heaped tbsp cacao

 

 

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1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease your cake pan.

 

2. Mix flour, baking powder and cacao in a bowl briefly and put aside.

 

 

 

 

3. In a mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar until pale and thick, about 5 minutes in medium to high speed.

 

 

 

 

4. Add milk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract and beat until the ingredients are incorporated.

 

 

 

 

 

5. Add dry ingredients mixture and beat just until the ingredients are incorporated, do not over mix not to produce too much gluten (alternatively, you can fold in the dry ingredients).

 

 

 

6. Pour the cake batter in the pan and tap onto the counter / table a few times to release any trapped air. Put in the oven, in medium rack and bake for about 30-35, just until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (so start checking after 25 minutes in the oven, your oven might have a different result and the cake can be baked already in 25 minutes – then you don’t need to bake it further).

 

 

 

7. While cake is in the oven, prepare the sauce. Put all sauce ingredients in a medium pan and whisk. Then transfer on medium heat and continue whisking for about half a minute, only until sugar is dissolved. Do not boil the sauce.

 

 

 

 

8. When cake is ready and out of the oven, let it sit and cool for 5 minutes. After that, pour the sauce all over the cake and let it cool at least half an hour before serving (waiting longer will make it taste even richer, as I explained in the text above). Enjoy!