This is a large chocolate chip cake and will be enjoyed by many, as it combines vanilla and chocolate icing in a lovely way.
Use good quality dark chop chips. If you don’t have choc chips, buy a good quality dark chocolate and cut into small pieces. Freeze the chocolate pieces when you start the cake, as this will help the chocolate keep its shape while baking.
I used 3 x 20cm cake pans for this cake. I even took a small amount of batter and baked as a cupcake. It worked really well for both the cake and the cupcakes. As usual, if you make cupcakes instead of one big cake, shorten the baking time to 15-20 minutes. This recipe could easily give you 25-30 cupcakes. Make sure you have enough muffin pans to use this amount of mixture or that your oven is large enough to handle 2 or 3 muffin trays.
Tip if you don’t have buttermilk: Measure out a ¾ cup of full cream milk, add 1tbsp. lemon juice or vinegar, and allow to sit for 5 minutes. The mixture will thicken and become lumpy.
Ingredients (Serves 14-16)
- 375g butter/margarine
- 450g castor sugar
- 375g cake flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract/essence
- 5 large eggs
- ¾ cup buttermilk (see tip above if you don’t have buttermilk)
- 180g dark choc chips
Method to make Cake
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Grease and line the bottom of 3 x 20cm round baking pans.
- In a large mixing bowl, measure out the flour, baking powder and salt. Use a whisk and lightly mix these ingredients together.
- In another bowl, measure out the butter/margarine and castor sugar. Beat with an electric beater or stand mixer until pale and creamy.
- Add the eggs one at a time and beat well. Add vanilla.
- Alternating the dry ingredients with the buttermilk, mix into the cream mixture in 3 portions. Start with the flour, then add some buttermilk and beat after each addition, until well mixed. Never over-mix when adding dry ingredients as you will end up with a bread-like cake. This part of the mixing should be done in under 2 minutes.
- Fold in the choc chips evenly through the batter. Divide batter into pans and bake for about 25-30 minutes, until golden and well risen.
- Leave to cool in the pans pan for about 5 minutes, and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Decorating the Cake
This cake can be decorated using a vanilla buttercream, chocolate buttercream, whipped cream, cream cheese, or even whipped ganache.
See icings and frostings for recipes and more ideas.
