Valerie's chocolate cake

Name: Valerie's chocolate cake
Cook time: 1 h
Yield: Many
Ingredients: 1 3/4 cups SR flour; 3/4 cup sugar; 1/2 cup cocoa; 1 tsp bicarb soda; 125g butter, melted; 2 eggs; 1 cup natural yoghurt (Greek-style is good)

Rebecca Barnard

April 22, 2013

Time:30 mins - 1 hourServes:Many

Epicure's Leanne Tolra wrote about family favourite chocolate cakes in 2006. This recipe was shared by Melbourne singer and Triple J radio personality Rebecca Barnard. "Valerie was someone I had known all my life, I grew up with her children and she was an incredibly good cook," said Rebecca. "It's quite a simple recipe. You can put it all in a blender and it has a special, really yummy icing that uses melted chocolate and vanilla essence."

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups SR flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp bicarb soda
125g butter, melted
2 eggs
1 cup natural yoghurt (Greek-style is good)

Icing

150g cooking chocolate
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 1/2 tbsp butter
3 drops vanilla essence

Method

Heat oven to 180C.
Mix dry ingredients together then add butter, eggs and yoghurt (either in food processor or by hand) and mix until smooth.
Pour into round or square cake tin* and bake about 50 mins.
For icing
Melt chocolate carefully over hot water.
Cream butter and icing sugar, add vanilla and melted chocolate.
* We tested the recipe in a 20cm square tin. For the two-layer version of this cake (pictured), we doubled the recipe, and put the mixture into 23cm and 16cm square tins.
Note: When Rebecca sent in the recipe, her accompanying note said: "This cake looks best if iced all over. Square looks really good too. Valerie made a big square and then the same cake in a smaller, square tin, put it on top, iced the whole thing and put a beautiful ribbon at the base of the small one."