Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

Sometimes, I feel the vacation hasn’t really helped me get rid of the tiredness. Or is it that I really need to tweak my timings? It feels like my chores just take away the joy of my time. For the time I wake up till the time I sleep, there is a constant rush of activities going on – whether it’s packing the kids’ lunch box to prepping my meals to getting stuck in traffic to work – which is Alhamdulillah a blessing, I must say! – to the traffic back, and then working out and then going home to more chores that never seem to end. At times, it drains up my energy, but then I tell myself that there are people who look for the kind of life that I have. Always, the other side is greener, isn’t it? 🙂

I am now trying to see what I can do to move my workout timings to morning. I may have to wake up a bit earlier and get running, but working out in the morning may make me feel more fresh and even give me more time coming home after work. I am not even sure if I can work it out that way, but it’s always worth a try…

It wouldn’t be fair if I don’t include a chocolate cake into the three back-to-back series of plain tea cakes, isn’t it? The first one in this series was the Hot Milk Cake. My search for the best chocolate cake is never ending. I love it in all forms I have tried, whether this steamed version, this fudgy dark chocolate version, this one bowl quick fix version, the eggless one, the vegan one or this brownie cake version. These are just the plain ones on the blog, you may put a chocolate cake search and discover the other variants too! But if you ask me, which one is my favorite, I would really struggle. Let me be honest with you – it has to be just chocolate cake. The texture, the flavors, don’t matter to me. So each time I have baked all, I have loved them. The latest addition to the list is this cake with buttermilk.

Buttermilk is very well known to impart its properties to cakes or bakes it is added to. It adds an additional layer of moisture to it, more than what milk can do. That’s exactly my feel when I tried this cake. I initially baked it for Rasha to carry it for her madrassa mates. She came back with empty packets and a sad face. I was confused. When I questioned her, she said, “Ummi, I didn’t get a single piece. All I got was crumbs!” 😀 I then ended up baking the cake again so that she could enjoy them. Just like me, she loves chocolate cake, unlike Azza who prefers white ones and preferably strawberry. Even she ended up enjoying this cake. It was totally soft and melt in mouth, so perfect with a cup of strong black coffee! The recipe is quite easy to follow and straightforward to make. I used our local version of buttermilk – laban – to make this cake and it was too yum! Off to the recipe…

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

Course Cake

Cuisine American

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 50 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour

Servings 8 -10

Author Rafeeda

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup butter melted
• 1/4 cup oil
• 2 large eggs room temperature
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup hot water
• 1 tsp instant coffee

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease and dust a 13x9 inch pan and set aside.
• Whisk together ingredients from flour to salt till well combined.
• In another bowl, beat the butter, oil, eggs and vanilla till homogeneous.
• Add the coffee into the hot water and pour into the mixture, and beat.
• Add half the flour mixture and fold in, followed by half the buttermilk. Mix well. Repeat till done and the batter is well mixed.
• Pour into prepared pan and bake for 40 minutes or till skewer comes out clean.
• Cool in pan for 10 minutes before flipping onto a cooling rack. Cool completely before slicing and serving.

Notes

You can make your own buttermilk by adding one tsp vinegar into a cup of milk and allowing it to sit undisturbed for 10 minutes.
I have used store bought laban instead of buttermilk, but since laban is quite thick, I took 3/4 cup of laban and added 1/4 cup of water to dilute it.

Sending this to Srivalli’s Kid’s Delight event for the Kid’s Delight Anniversary Party