Rich chocolate cake and edible flowers

I have wanted to use edible flowers for so long. Pre-blog. The idea that such beautiful decorations are edible fits in well with my general approach to cooking – I don’t like things to just look good, I want them to taste good as well.

So when I stumbled across some gorgeous edible flowers at Leichhardt organic markets, I bought them on impulse. They were from Darling Mills Farm (which is quite possibly the cutest name ever) and I was super happy with them. I found some fantastic produce at the markets, and, as usual, Instagrammed them.

Rich chocolate cake

2 cups plain flour
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ cup cocoa
2 tsp bicarb
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
¾ cup milk
1 cup strong coffee
½ cup canola or vegetable oil

30g edible flowers

Preheat your oven to 160C and grease two 8 inch sandwich tins. I also placed a circle of baking paper at the bottom of each of my sandwich tins, just to be on the safe side.

Sift all of your dry ingredients together – the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarb – until they’re well mixed. Add in your vanilla and the eggs, mixing until both eggs have combined.

Brew a strong cup of coffee (I used two teaspoons of instant coffee in one cup of boiling water) and add it to the mixture as well. Pour in the milk, and finally the canola oil.

The oil replaces butter in this recipe and makes it nice and moist, but it may take some perseverance to mix it in properly. The oil will want to sit on the top of the mixture, so you need to mix it well and disperse it throughout.

The mixture will be very runny, but don’t worry. Pour it evenly between your two tins and put them in the oven for 30-35 minutes. If possible, keep them on the same shelf of the oven and rotate them at 15 minutes so that they cook evenly. They’re ready when a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Set them to one side to cool and make your icing. I used a vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream to ice my cake, but it uses five egg whites (which is kind of excessive), and normal icing works well too. I’ll post the icing recipe up soon. Whatever icing you use, make enough to act as a filling as well. (Note: I’ve since posted the Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe here.)

One of your two cakes will most likely be a nice shape than the other. Pick the one that is slightly dodgier, and slice off the first centimetre or so with a bread knife so that you have a flat cake. Using a palette knife, spread a thin layer of buttercream icing in the top of your now flat cake and place the second cake on top of it. Spread the rest of the icing over the two cakes as smoothly as you can.

If you can’t get the icing as smooth as you’d like, grab a cup of hot water and dip your palette knife in it for a few seconds. Take the warmed palette knife and run it back over the icing, dipping it back in the hot water regularly, this will give it a really smooth finish.