Hope you're having a nice weekend 😁

Maybe you find yourself in the same situation as me, or not? In my family, for every eight or nine out of ten birthdays, I'm in charge of making the cake... And they love chocolate. As for the birthday boy turning 53, he loves a big piece of sponge cake.

I'd been working a lot and was already running late for this; I needed to make a cake that my brother would like--a lot--, and I only had a couple of hours to complete the task. "Brownie!" Thought I, haha. That was my first idea.

But only one brownie wouldn't be enough; I should make at least two, and I didn't have the necessary baking pans available at the moment.

I remembered a trick I used to do years ago: make a simple modification to the recipe, to turn two brownies into a tall chocolate sponge cake, enough for 16 people. It's super easy. Perhaps you know it already 😁

I don't know if you guys had the same problem as me, but I was never good with chocolate cakes. When I made them myself, I always found them too dry to my liking. And when someone else made them, I almost always thought they didn't taste chocolatey enough. It's probable that it had to do with the kind of cocoa/chocolate used.

The flavor of cocoa is nutty and intense, but there are many commercial brands that insist on adding a lot of chemicals that replace its rich flavor and aroma with artificial flavors that I don't like at all. I prefer to use artisan cocoa or, otherwise, a good brand of chocolate like Savoy. It all depends on the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

Sponge Cake:

• 3/4 cups melted margarine
• 3/4 cups oil (I used corn oil)
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 & 1/2 cups egg
• 2 tablespoons vanilla essence
• 3 cups self-rising wheat flour
• 2/3 cups cocoa powder (unsweetened)
• (I would've used 1/2 teaspoon of salt, but the margarine had salt already.)

• enough margarine to grease the baking pan

Chocolate Sauce & Decoration

I was short of everything and had no time to go to the super, so I had to manage:

• 75 gr Savoy dark chocolate (55%)
• 3/4 cups coconut milk (I used homemade)
• a spoonful Nutella
• a spoonful condensed milk
• a handful of roasted walnuts

THE PROCESS

Sponge Cake

Before I could make my mind, I considered my options. Quickly, I decided to use my simple bundt cake pan. Since this is a doughnut-shaped pan, my sponge cake would take less time in the oven. Besides, it's as tall as I needed it.

I melted the margarine in a pot on the stove and then poured it into a bowl. I added the oil, mixed, and added the sugar. I mixed it well again.

Next, I added the eggs and vanilla essence and mixed well until it was homogeneous.

I needed to mix the dry ingredients. So I sifted the flour and cocoa powder.

Once the dry mix was also homogeneous, I poured in the wet mix.

And mixed well with a pastry spoon to get a smooth and thick batter.

I prepared my simple mold for bundt cake; I greased it well with enough margarine so I wouldn't have to coat it with flour. I poured the batter into the mold.

At this point, I decided that I would not make the cake as tall as I had planned because I would have to wait longer than I had time for it to bake. So I saved some of the batter to make cupcakes for my brother, who after all was the birthday boy.

The cake baked for an hour at 300° F.

...And it was quite easy to unmold even when it I did it when it was still hot. I had to hurry up.

Chocolate Sauce / Garnish

As I said before, I was short of everything, so I had to improvise to make a decent chocolate sauce for this cake. I had the main ingredient: 75 gr of Savoy dark chocolate. I put it in the pot.

I added some coconut milk.

I also added the last bit of condensed milk. I forgotten it for weeks in the fridge.

I had used Nutella for my little niece's cake. I scraped the sides of the jar to get out what was left, haha. A spoonful. Not bad. I mixed all the ingredients and let the sauce cook for about 5 minutes stirring constantly. It smelled so good ❤️

The hot sauce went back into the Nutella jar; I used the necessary amount so that the cake was well covered and soaked...

...and saved the rest for my brother's cupcakes. He really tanked me for that 😄

I placed some coarsely crushed roasted walnuts on top. It was a crown of crushed walnuts.

I poured more chocolate sauce on top.

Has it ever happened to you that you prepare the same thing so many times that when you make it, you no longer feel like eating it?

Well, this happens to me with chocolate cakes and even more if they have some cow's milk in them, which is not good for me at all. But this time, I really wanted to bite into this cake! It smelled so good. But I restrained myself and the cake made it to my father's house--on time 😁

There was enough cake for all of us, and everyone was pleased, including myself.

So basically, I added a couple of eggs and a cup of extra flour to my usual brownie mix to make this chocolate cake. Another detail is that I substituted half of the oil by melted margarine. It had a lot of cocoa flavor and was moist. As you can see, it's actually easy compared to most recipes for chocolate sponge cake. As always, I hope you've found this recipe useful 😁❤️

How about a bite?

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

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