Black Velvet Cake

This decadent Black Velvet Cake is dark in colour and uses cocoa, giving it a unique flavour unlike any other chocolate cake. It’s an ultra moist, tender, soft cake, packed with chocolate flavour and naturally coloured. Enjoy this cake with Philadelphia cheese frosting – a tasty dessert treat. It makes the perfect Halloween cake!

Ingredients for the chocolate cake:

• 1 and 3/4 cups plain flour
• 1.5 cups caster sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1,5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ½ cup (125 ml) rapeseed or sunflower oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup of freshly brewed hot coffee

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

Pour buttermilk, oil, eggs, vanilla, and sugar into a larger bowl. Use a whisk only to mix the ingredients (do not use the mixer). Add sifted dry ingredients: plain flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, and salt and mix with a spatula only to combine the ingredients. Slowly add hot coffee, stirring further with a spatula.

Pour the finished batter into a springform pan, 23 cm in diameter, lined with baking paper.

Bake at 170ºC for 40 – 45 minutes or longer until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Remove from the oven, cool, cut the top off and cut it into 3 layers.

Ingredients for the Philadelphia cheese cream:

• 420 g Philadelphia cheese, at room temperature
• 140 g butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste

Put the butter, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of the mixer and mix until light and fluffy. Add the cream cheese in three turns, constantly mixing.

Also:

• fresh blackberries

Layer the cake with the cream, leaving the cream on the sides and top of the cake. Arrange fresh blackberries on top. Cool in the fridge.

Enjoy!