Chocolate Cake!

Hi Guys,
            So I thought I'd give you the recipe for my Good Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake. If you are going to get started with baking, I recommend starting with this cake as it's fairly simple to make and serves about 8. So lets get started:

Ingredients;

For the cake;

• 200 grams plain flour
• 200 grams caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 40 grams best-quality cocoa powder (I like to use Cadbury's Bournville!)
• 175 grams soft unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 150 ml sour cream

For the icing

• 75 grams unsalted butter
• 175 grams best quality dark chocolate(broken up)
• 300 grams icing sugar
• 1 tablespoon golden syrup
• 125 ml sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• sugar flowers (optional)

Method;

1. Take everything out of the fridge so that all the ingredients can reach room temperature.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180*C / 350*F and butter two 20cm/8inch sandwich tins 
3. Now all you have to do is put all the cake ingredients-flour,sugar,baking powder, and bicarb, cocoa, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream-into a food processor and process it until you have a smooth, thick batter. If you don't have a food processor or you don't want to do that, just mix the flour, sugar and leavening agents in a large bowl and beat in the soft butter until you have a combined and creamy mixture-although mine wasn't creamy, and still worked fine  
4.  Divide this batter, using a rubber spatula to help you scrape and spread, into the prepared tins and bake until a cake tester or thin skewer comes out clean, which should be about 35 minutes-but I would check your cake after 25! 
5. Remove the cakes, in their tins, onto a wire rack and let them cool for 10 minutes before turning them out of their tins. Don't worry about any cracks!
6. To make the icing, melt the butter and chocolate in a good sized bowl either in a microwave or suspended over a pan of boiling water. Either way, go slowly or else it will burn!
7. While the chocolate and butter are cooling, sieve the icing sugar into another bowl
8. Add the Golden Syrup to the cooled chocolate mixture, followed by the sour cream and vanilla. When this is all combined, whisk in the sieved icing sugar.
9. When you've done, you may need to add a little boiling water or some more icing sugar to get the icing to the right consistency. It may be right as it is, but you don't want it so runny is dribbles off the cake, or too thick to spread. It should be liquid enough to coat easy, but thick enough not to slide off.
10. Choose your cake stand/plate and sit one of the cakes onto it
11. Spoon about 1/3 of the icing onto the center of the cake half and spread with a knife or spatula until you cover the top of it evenly. Sit the other cake on top of it, and gently press them together.
12. Spoon another third of the icing on to the top of the cake, and spread it in a swirly textured way, or any textured way you would like. Spread the sides of the cake with the remaining icing also, and leave it for a few minutes to set.
13. Finally, I love to dot the cake with some Sugar Flowers, as they look so cute!

Enjoy xx

                              :)