Red wine chocolate cake with golden syrup chocolate sauce recipe

Red wine chocolate cake with golden syrup chocolate sauce

Red wine and chocolate cake – do they go well together? 

Red wine and chocolate cake brings back just one memory for me, sharing a bottle of red wine and a slice of chocolate cake with an ex. We both have a sweet tooth but we decided to share a slice of large chocolate cake. Two persons, one slice of cake, should be no problem, we will win this easily. But we were wrong, we had to throw in the towel and left the restaurant defeated. It was one of the biggest slices of chocolate cake I had ever seen. However we had no problems finishing the bottle of wine, and I think we had more afterwards, probably to drown our sorrows. 

Based on my mixed experiences with red wine and chocolate cake, I nevertheless decided to combine the two together into a cake. The result is a cake that has excellent flavor, really moist with almost a fudge like texture.

The cake has a subtle wine flavour, it is not overly strong. If you prefer the cake to have a stronger wine flavour you can increase the wine content and reduce the amount of water and oil

If you prefer the cake to be lighter you can add  1½ teaspoons of baking soda. 

Instead of making a frosting, I decided to make a lighter golden syrup chocolate sauce.

A few notes regarding some of the key ingredients used:

- many recipes use oil instead of butter. While butter has a nice flavor it is solid at room temperature while oil is not. As such using oil is likely to result in a more moist cake. Oil is 100% fat whereas butter is about 80% fat and 20% water. So if you use use the cake will have more fat, hence more moist. The water in butter will develop gluten in the flour and this will affect the texture of the cake, the crumbs will be slightly firmer. Lastly the dairy flavour in butter may marginally mute the chocolate flavour  whereas oil is more neutral.

- most recipes use water which seems unusual for a cake. The reason is that milk will downplay or mute the flavor of the chocolate. Try comparing a cocoa and water mixture with a cocoa and milk mixture. The cocoa flavor will be more profound in the water/cocoa mixture.

The recipe I used is based on Pioneer Woman’s Best Chocolate Sheet Ever, Alton Brown’s Devil's Food Cake and Hersheys "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake. Pioneer woman uses water, buttermilk and butter and Hershey’s uses water, milk and oil. I used water, wine and oil. I prefer wine, wouldn’t you also?

Ingredients

2 cups flour

2 cups sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

4 heaped tablespoons cocoa

1 cup oil

1 cup boiling water

½ cup wine

2 eggs, beaten

1½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the golden syrup chocolate sauce

¼ cup golden syrup

¼ cup milk

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Directions

1. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans. 

2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in large bowl.

3. Add eggs, wine, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer for 2 minutes

4. Stir in boiling water. The batter will be thin. Pour the batter into prepared pans.

5. Bake at 175 degrees Celsius/350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. 

6. To make the sauce mix golden syrup, milk and cocoa powder.

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