Cola and chocolate cake

For this month's Stamford Clandestine Cake Club, the theme was 'Quench your thirst' - beverage bakes. I wanted to stay away from alcohol, knowing that a lot of my slightly alcoholic cake club members (not really! Well, maybe) would be using booze. Instead, I researched and found a recipe for a chocolate cake using cola.

Once this was baked, I was very worried that it would be really sickly and far too sweet. But I was surprised - it was sweet, but very moist and fluffy, and not sickly. It was rich, yes, but it a good way. It went down very well at cake club, with only one slice left by the end of the night.

250g self-raising flour
300g golden caster sugar
3 heaped tbsp cocoa
pinch bicarbonate of soda
250g margarine
250ml cola
125ml milk
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the topping

100g butter

2 tbsp cola drink

2 tbsp cocoa

200g icing sugar

Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan).Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl.Melt the butter and cola gently in a pan then add to the dry ingredients, together with the milk, eggs and vanilla.Mix gently but thoroughly and tip into a buttered, loose based cake tin (24cm/9½ in diameter).Bake for about 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.Remove from the oven and leave for about 15 minutes while you make the topping.Put the butter, cola, and cocoa into a pan and melt slowly. Bring the mixture to the boil and then pour on to the icing sugar. Beat until smooth and pour over the cake while still warm. Cool the cake in the tin.

I have to admit to a bit of a caketastrophy with this one. The batter was very runny, and after pouring it into my loose-bottomed cake tin, it promptly starting coming out of the bottom. I placed the tin on a baking tray, bunged it in the oven, and hoped for the best. Towards the end of baking time I started to smell that all-too recognisable burning smell. When I took the cake out of the oven, there was a thin layer of burnt cake filling the baking tray, going underneath the cake tin too. The cake itself was fine - albeit a little smaller than it should have been due to the spillage! I don't know whether this was because the mixture was too runny, or whether I need a new tin... I'll have to keep my eye on that. 

I decorated the cake with cola bottle sweets, which I think might have been more popular than the cake itself...