Very important question about chocolate cake

[SeventhRaccoon]

I'm having a debate with DH about the standard way to ice an ordinary chocolate cake. When you make one (talking normal weekend or bake sale type baking here rather than once a year Bake Off style efforts) do you:

Ice it with buttercream icing
Ice it with water icing (think that's what it's called? - icing sugar and cocoa mixed together with hot water)
Ice it with melted chocolate
Ice it with a packet mix (Betty Crocker or similar)
Spread it with whipped cream
Ice it with something completely different (in which case please explain what you use!)
Not ice it at all?

Rasp jam in the middle and dusting of icing sugar on the top. Grated choc if feeling fancy

Fairy cakes got water icing but we mixed it with a bit of orange juice as well so it had a choc orange flavour

Now that chocolate orange water icing sounds really tasty, @SeaToSki. Not overly sweet I'm guessing? Definitely going to have to give it a go.

Late to the game, but ganache every time. Or anything that doesn’t involved eating raw butter

Can we clarify here, with so many people saying buttercream, do you all mean American buttercream?basically sugar and butter , a spoon of cream etc? Not Swiss or Italian buttercream with various heating egg white methods? Cos there’s nothing midweek about that!
We do the water icing I guess for bog standard cakes, icing sugar with a spoon of butter and cocoa and hot water, can be milk. I quite like the glaze suggestion.

Right. Chocolate cake in oven.

In fact I’m not sure that my icing is precisely buttercream - it’s a little bit of melted butter and hot water mixed with icing sugar and cocoa. Which is how my mother always made it - so richer than glacé icing with no butter, but nowhere near as creamy and sickly as buttercream made by whipping butter and icing sugar. Not sure what to call it now, but cake covering is now occupying far too much headspace...

@timeisnotaline, I was definitely thinking of American buttercream. My Mum has gone mad for icing cakes with it lately, for some reason.

Iv tried many CCs but the best is my Mums. Jam and flake in the middle and topped with fresh whipped cream and more flake. Oh what a delight!

My standard chocolate cake recipe is the same one my grandma used. It's supposed to have buttercream in the middle and chocolate glace icing on top, so that might be the traditional way to do it. I've hardly ever bothered with the glace icing though, just fill and then leave it plain. Have been known to use cherry jam or nutella to fill when feeling lazy.

Having been raised to strictly adhere to use bys and once-opened-use-within's fresh dairy toppings worry me, I'd only use them for occasion cakes that I knew would be eaten within a day or two 😅

@QueenPaw oo I’d forgotten that! We used to chop Mars bars up, add a bit of milk, and microwave until soft. Then pour over. Made a nice ice cream sauce too.

Who knew there were so many options for icing a chocolate cake!

I have to dispute the idea that a water/glacé icing isn't nice, though. There is in fact butter in mine, just a bit. And not very much water at all, just enough to bind it. It's delicious, extremely chocolatey, and less sickly than buttercream (though I do like buttercream too, just have to be in the right mood).

I'll have to give a ganache another go. I remember it being quite bitter, but maybe that was the recipe I used (it was for a very dark chocolate cake).

Water icing is for children's fairy cakes. Chocolate buttercream all the way and if you add a little strong espresso to the cake mixture it deepens the flavour and you don't taste the coffee.

I don't like icing so I have my chocolate cake nude but cherry jam in the middle is welcome and cream (of any variety) to serve is good with me.

In my house the cakes barely make it out if the tin before someone is at it. But in theory there'll usually be chocolate butter icing in the middle and nothing on top.

Chocolate buttercream if it was for a bake sale. If it's for me I'd probably go with ganache.

Plain buttercream in the middle, chocolate butter cream on top.

Or, from days when I lived abroad, and the icing sugar was dodgy, the fudgy icing from this recipie, discovered purely because it doesn't use icing sugar.

Buttercream in the middle, cover in chocolate buttercream or melted chocolate

Buttercream between the layers and ganache on top.

While we are discussing chocolate cake, hoe do you stop them feeling dry? I do what my mum did, replace a quarter of the flour with cocoa powder, but it isn’t great!

Made this last week - lighter than ganache and nicer than buttercream
www.bakingmad.com/recipes/chocolate-fudge-icing

Someone asked how to make ganache, I warm cream in a pan and melt the chocolate into it until it's the right consistency. I use milk chocolate instead of dark and it's fantastic! I also put a tablespoon or two of milk in the cake batter to help dryness.

Chocolate fudge icing in the middle and on top.

2.5oz melted butter
8oz icing sugar
About 3 heaped tablespoons cocoa powder - basically so it looks chocolatey rather than latte
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Dash milk - no more than 2 tablespoons

It just needs a good mix with a spoon. It's so forgiving you can even just just a blender if you have lumpy icing sugar.

Half on top and half in the middle. If you put it on when the cake is still warm it kinda melts in. Lovely stuff.

Icing - made with 85g Icing Sugar, 2 teas Cocoa Powder and maximum of 1 tablespoon water. Mix together [just use sufficient water to get right consistency] until smooth and spoon into the bottom of a polythene bag. Snip the corner of the bag off and drizzle icing over the cake - first one way and then at right angles. You could also drizzle it down the sides if you prefer. Easy peasy.

I'll have to give a ganache another go. I remember it being quite bitter, but maybe that was the recipe I used (it was for a very dark chocolate cake).
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I use 2/3rds dark chocolate and 1/3rd milk chocolate + half the amount in double cream so it's not as dark and bitter

Chocolate buttercream with crushed maltesers

Buttercream and or ganache generally.

Dd loves chocolate cake so for her birthday I always make the Jamie Oliver chocolate party cake; whipped cream and fruit in the middle topped with ganache and fruit. Yum!