I used an Usborne Cookery book for Poppy's favourite chocolate cake. It's divine, but very rich. It's based on dark chocolate, but I did it with milk chocolate for dd's 8th birthday this weekend.
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons of sunflower oil
250g self raising flour
6 tablespoons of cocoa powder
2 teaspoons of baking powder
300g sunflower margarine (not low fat)
2 teaspoons of vanilla essence or extract
6 large eggs
150g chocolate
150ml double cream
two round cake tins
heat your oven to gas mark 3
put greaseproof paper on your cake tins and brush them and the sides of the tins with sunflower oil (I used margerine, saved buying a bottle of oil I wouldn't use). Hold a sieve over a large bowl and sift in flower, cocoa and baking powder. Put marge and sugar in another bowl and beat until creamy. Add vanilla nd beat again.
Carck one egg into a cup and add it to the bowl with the marge/sugar in and add a tablespoon of flour. Beat well. Repeat it with each egg.
Gently stir in the rest of the flour moving the spoon in a figure 8. That keeps the mixture light.
Put the mixture into your two cake tins and put them in the middle shelf of the oven. Cook for 40-45 minutes. Test with a skewer or end of a wooden spoon. If there's nothing on them, your cake is cooked.
When the cakes are cooked leave them to cool for 5 minutes then run a knife around the side of the tin and turn the cakes upside down to cool, taking off the greaseproof paper.
For the icing, break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl, add cream. Heat about 2 inches of water in a pan until it bubbles, then put the bowl over it. Stir the chocolate as it melts. Once it's melted, and cooled, put it in the fridge. Stir it a few times whilst it's in the fridge. Eventually, it'll go like soft butter and you can spread a third of it in the middle of the two cakes and the rest on the tops and sides.
If you ever want to do this for an adult party, use something dark, like Green & Blacks and put raspberries in. It's to die for!
I'm a rubbish cake maker, but this was really divine! I melted chocolate and spread it over the cake instead of using the buttercream, so it'd wrap better for the party bags, then I let it set in the fridge.
It was perfect! Hope you have fun.