Farmors Chokladkaka

a.k.a. Grandma’s Chocolate Cake (can also be made as vanilla cake)

Short introduction

My Swedish paternal grandmother used to make this cake.

Thankfully her daughter in law, my mother, wrote it down :)

Fits well into a 24 cm or 9 inch diameter round cake form, making a shallow-ish cake.

Ingredients

ml: millilitres
tsp: tea spoon
dsp: dinner or table spoon
g: grams

Original

• 250 ml flour
• 300 ml sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3 dsp (at least) cocoa powder
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 150 g melted butter
• 2 eggs
• 150 ml hot water

Bigger!

For a taller cake, or bigger form, I often bump the ingredients up a little - or you can just double the original measures, of course 😅

• 330 ml flour
• 400 ml sugar
• 2.5 tsp baking powder
• 4 dsp cocoa powder
• 1-and-a-bit tsp vanilla sugar
• 200 g melted butter
• 3 small eggs
• 200 ml hot water

Variants

The recipe is quite forgiving. You can use an oil instead of the melted butter. I haven’t yet tried an egg alternative.

Vanilla sugar isn’t available everywhere. Just put in whatever vanilla essence or other stuff you usually use. There’s already plenty of normal sugar in there!

You can completely omit the cocoa and bump the vanilla to get a nice moist vanilla sponge instead of chocolate. I feel like adding lemon might be tasty too, but I’ve not (yet) tried it.

The measures aren’t precise! Plus or minus some ml won’t make much of a difference.

Method

Not too complicated! And yes it is a very runny cake batter. Adding so much water feels weird but it’s good, I promise!

• Mix dry ingredients
• Add butter
• Whisk eggs & mix in
• Add water and stir with a whisk until even and smooth
• 175°C for ~40 minutes

Re: The oven - don’t turn on the fan unless you want the cake crust to come out a little wonky.

In practise, I tend to set a timer for 35 minutes, then test every 5 minutes thereafter until a skewer comes out mostly clean. This cake is at its best when it is moist.

Enjoy!

Serve with cream or ice cream.