I love Madeira cake. I mean REALLY love it. It’s part of my past. So when I was asked recently “How do you convert your Madeira cake recipe into a chocolate cake?” I thought it would be a great recipe to share with you all. I also still had the Morello Cherry and William Pear compote and Belgium chocolate ganache from Tesco’s to try out so they were a perfect fit!
This cake is really easy to make and is slightly firmer than my previous chocolate recipes, yet it’s still moist – making it a perfect foundation cake (as my mum would say). In other words it’s perfect for covering in sugarpaste for a celebration cake and the best thing is the fact that it doesn’t crumble like other chocolate cakes do. I do hate a crumbly cake, especially when you’re trying to get a crumb coating of buttercream on it!
Madeira cake recipe
(Makes an 8″ cake - 1 ½” deep)75g butter at room temperature 75g margarine (Flora is best) at room temperature 200g caster sugar 1 tea spoon vanilla essence 3 eggs 175 g plain flour 50g cocoa powder 1 ½ teasp of baking powder 3 tbsp milk
- Line an 8″ cake tin with silicon paper and pre-heat your oven to 180ºC (160ºC fan).
- Blend the butter, margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add the eggs slowly until they’re really well mixed in.
- In a separate bowl weigh out the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Mix them so that you have a light brown dry mixture. This will prevent you having any cocoa lumps in the mix. Sieve into the butter and sugar mix and blend.
- Add the vanilla essence and milk and mix well.
- Pour the cake mix into the tin and smooth with the back of a metal spoon. Bake for 45 minutes in the centre of the oven. The cake is ready when you can smell that delicious chocolate cake aroma filling your kitchen. The cake will come away from the sides of the tin and a skewer will come out clean when inserted into the middle of the cake.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack
- When completely cool cut into two halves and fill with compote/ buttercream /jam. I loved the Tesco’s compote. It would be great for making a black forest gateau.
This compote is delish!
- Cover the top of the cake with a dusting of icing sugar or a really decadent chocolate ganache (if you want a ganache recipe you can find mine on this post)
I re-heated the Tesco ganache in a saucepan and poured it all over the cake till it just dribbled down. There was a little left over which Tim said could not be wasted! He scooped it up with a spoon. I then placed the finished cake on the kitchen table to cool. Actually, it was to bribe the girls to do their homework before the Sunday evening witching hour! No homework. No cake!
It worked!
Enjoy!
emma looks gorgeousHow many calories but then who cares
We don’t count calories in this house… for obvious reasons!!!
EM
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Hi, I really need help, I want to make Maidera cake in two tiers.So first tier is going to be 10″(recipe please), second is going to be 8″ (recipe), and I am having trouble with figuring out measure in oz.So please somebody writte me detailed recipes I would be thankful a lot
Hi Dina,
Thanks for stopping by. You can see my regular Madeira cake recipe here http://cakesbakesandcookies.com/2011/05/28/my-mums-madiera-cake-is-the-best-in-the-world/#comments. It’s in g and oz. If you want to make it a chocolate recipe then swap 50g of chocolate for the flour and swap the water for milk for each set of ingredients.
For the 8″ cake use 1 x the ingredients. For the 10″ use 2x the ingredients. This should give you two cakes of the same depth (around 1½-2″).
Hope that helps
EmmaMT
Hi Emma, I have to agree with you about your Mum’s Madeira cake. I used it recently and it was delicious. I’m about to try your chocolate version today.
I’m a volunteer for Free Cakes for Kids, an organisation making birthday cakes for kids whose families aren’t able to supply one. I won’t be looking at other recipes, I’ll always be using yours from now on. Many thanks
Pat
Ah Pat thanks for that. So lovely to hear.
Tell me more about ‘Free cakes for Kids’. Sounds very interesting and something I should get involved with (or at lease bring it to my readers attention- as there are so many bakers out there!) Please leave me a comment with a web link so I can see.
Thanks
EmmaMT
Hello Emma,
Please can you tell me what the recipe will be for a 9inch round Chocolate cake.. I don’t want assume the recipe for your 8inch round is enough.
Thanks Emma
Tracey
It is enough to use the 8″ recipe. The difference will be about 1 cm less deep which you can make up for with buttercream. If you were to add half the ingredients on top it would be too much.
Hope that helps
EmmaMT
Thanks Emma,
One more question. How do I work out the amount of Cocoa powder to 250g flour?
Thank Emma
Tracey
)
I’d add 75g of cocoa powder.
EmmaMT
Hi emma would you use ganche on your chocalte maderia cake,im looking at covering both with maltezeers ?x
Oh yes, that would be amazing…especially the Malteser part!
EmmaMT