Eggless Chocolate cake

This Eggless Chocolate cake was dedicated to my friend's third wedding anniversary. I did not frost this cake with cream because of some transportation issues so I tried simple stencil technique here. I had cut a stencil on a paper and then used powdered sugar and grated coconut to decorate it.

Ingredients:

200gms all purpose flour or maida

1 tin or 400gm sweetened condensed milk
50 gm (1/4 cup) good quality cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda/ sodium bicarbonate

150 gm unsalted butter/ghee melted
2 tsp good quality vanilla extract
150 ml water/soda

Method:

Preparation for baking :

Preheat the oven at 180º C/ 350 F, 10 mins before baking. 

Grease your cake-baking pan with butter/oil. Sprinkle a 8 inches round pan with 1 tbsp of cocoa powder. Tap pans gently to make sure that powder spreads over the pan uniformly. 

Remove the excess cocoa and Set pans aside till ready to use.

Making the batter:

Beat softened butter and condensed milk in one direction till it turns creamy and uniform (I used my blender to beat). Now add vanilla essence to this and mix well.

Sieve together flour, baking powder, cocoa and soda bicarbonate in a bowl and repeat this process at least three times to ensure they mixed properly. Keep aside.

Start folding flour mixture and soda water to the butter mixture, alternatively, starting and ending with the flour.

Repeat the process till the flour and soda water is used completely(or you can check that correct consistency of batter is achieved). 

Folding means to slowly turn dry ingredients into the wet in a circular inward to outward motion. Do not beat or mix vigorously. The main purpose of folding is to allow more air into the mixture which you get from soda.

Pour batter into the prepared cake pan and bake at 150 degrees C for 60 minutes in the preheated oven. 

After 45 minutes start checking cake by inserting a toothpick or knife in the middle of cake, if it comes out clean then remove it from oven otherwise let it bake for few more minutes.

Once the cake is out of oven let it cool for 20 mins on the counter top. Don't make efforts to cool it under fan or so otherwise it will turn dry.

Loosen the sides of cake using a knife and then invert cake onto a plate or cooling rack. Now wrap this warm cake in a plastic wrap which will keep it moist.

If you want to frost your cake wait for cake to cool down completely and frost it with cream or simply place a stencil and decorate it with powdered sugar or cocoa or coconut.

In Microwave:
We can bake(basically cook) this cake in microwave also and that too in few minutes like 5 minutes. But the only difference will be the texture and the color of the cake. It will not turn brown and no hard crust on the top but taste will be exactly the same.
What you need to do is to just put the same cake batter in a greased microwave bowl (say glass bowl)and then cook for 5 minutes or until cake gets set with power setting set to high power i.e. 100%.
Check it out every 2 mins and if the cake looks still wet go ahead with another 30 seconds.The timing is subjected to your microwave settings.
Let the cake cool down for 15 mins and then you can invert it and follow the same rules above.
Remember that when I am saying microwave it! then I mean microwave cooking which we use for reheating or defrosting not the convection mode/grill which we use for baking or grilling.

Notes:

-Time to bake and to cool depends on the amount of batter you have poured in the pan.If it is more time will be more if it is less than cake will be ready in less time.
-While cooling, once the cake is warm you can wrap it in a plastic wrap to keep it moist and fresh.

-The cake cracks sometimes because of the uneven heating which can be minimize by not opening the oven frequently while baking and always put the pan in the middle of oven for even baking.
-Always do stencil work 15-20 minutes before you want to serve if doing it with sugar as it can get 
absorbed quickly.
-Use exact amount of ingredients to get better result.