A chocolate cream cake for Mum

For years and years Mum kept saying that the cakes I made weren’t light enough. Turns out it’s because she prefers the spongier texture and subtler flavour of Asian bakery cakes, rather than those with a cakier crumb which I enjoy. So with it being Mum’s birthday – well, one of her birthdays, depending on whether she chooses to celebrate according to the Gregorian calendar or the Chinese Lunar one – and an appropriately timed post from Vondelicious, I decided to give baking one those Asian-style cakes a try.

And while I’m not one of those people who can recall baking recipes from the top of their head, I do at least remember that most call for a ratio of 2 eggs, 125g of butter, half a cup of sugar and about one and a half cups of flour. This recipe, however, threw all that out the window with its high egg and low flour content, which I suppose is how that spongy texture is achieved.

It was quite an easy cake to make and didn’t involve much washing up at all. As there is no butter involved and only a small amount of oil, the washing up was very easy as well. There is quite a volume of eggs to whisk, so an electric mixer of some sort will help a great deal. I baked my cake in a 20cm round cake tin (which took around 35 minutes) and may have checked the cake for doneness too early, as the poor cake suffered quite a bit of collapse once removed from the oven and upon cooling. This resulted in a two rather than a three-layer cake, with thicker portions of (possibly over-beaten) cream in between and on top, but it didn’t bother my mother in the slightest.

Most importantly, Mum loved the cake and I now have serious thoughts of making this again but as a matcha version! Mmmm...

happy birthday, mum!