Madhouse recipe : Chocolate Sheet Cake

Last weekend, Pierre asked if we could make a cake. I wasn't against the idea of baking in itself, but I couldn't be bothered going to the supermarket for supplies because it was pouring hard. This recipe was ideal as it used nothing that wasn't already lurking in the cupboards. It actually made a huge cake - what you can see in the top picture is only half of the finished cake - so you could easily halve the measures if you want something smaller. That said, it didn't last long, so you may want to stick with the bigger size ! I was intrigued by this recipe, as I'd never made a cake by boiling a mixture of butter and cocoa, so I was keen to see how it would turn out. When it was just out of the oven and barely cooled down, it tended to fall apart after cutting it, but the next day, it was perfect and held together very well. I used a recipe on The Alaska Life blog, but transformed the measurements from cups to weight and swapped quite a few ingredients around. Head over to see the original version though.

 Chocolate Sheet Cake

ingredients :

285g flour

1tbsp baking powder

450g sugar

225g butter

6 tablespoons cocoa powder

25cl water

1 yogurt (I used peach but it makes no difference)

2 tsp cinnamon

2 eggs (slightly beaten)

to decorate : Philly with Milka + sprinkles

Put the flour, baking powder and sugar into a bowl and stir.

Put the butter, cocoa powder and water into a saucepan and gently bring to the boil, stirring to melt the butter.

Once it starts bubbling, pour the melted butter/cocoa powder mixture into the flour/sugar and stir it all together.

Add the yogurt, cinnamon and slightly beaten eggs and stir until well combined.

Pour into a greased baking tray - as there was such a large quantity, I ended up using a foil-lined roasting tin !

Bake for about 30 minutes (dependent on the size of your baking tin) at 180°C. 

Take the cake out of the baking tray and leave to cool. I then chopped ours in half, slathering one half with Philadelphia with Milka (check out my review if you've missed out on this delight so far ! - you could use icing or chocolate and hazelnut spread instead). Scatter over some sprinkles, nuts, meringues or whatever else you may have.

The original version used buttermilk, so if you want to have a play around with that, head over to the original recipe, which also has an option for homemade icing. This was a great cake for using up various odds and ends hanging around in the cupboards. The kids had just one word to say - hmmmmmm !