Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Fudge Icing | Ash Baber (2024)

The other day I wanted to eat cake, but every time I make cakes, the process always takes too many hours.

I wanted a cake that doesn’t take so long, so I made this vanilla cake with a chocolate fudge icing on top.

I think vanilla cake with a chocolate icing is such a good combination. I love chocolate, but I think too much chocolate can be overwhelming sometimes, so vanilla cake with chocolate icing is the perfect balance.

We are actually going to make the fudge icing first, before we make the cake.

This is just because the icing needs some time to set up, so it’s better to make this first.

Making it is super easy, you just melt the ingredients together then leave this to set.

These are the ingredients you will need to make it:

• Dark chocolate
• Unsalted butter – I like to use unsalted butter and add the salt separately, so that I can control the amount of salt. But salted butter does work too, just don’t add in any extra salt.
• Icing sugar – also known as powdered sugar.
• Double cream – also known as heavy cream.
• Salt – to enhance the flavours. Leave this out if you are using salted butter.

I know a lot of people don’t love the taste of dark chocolate, so let’s talk about this.

Using dark chocolate for this icing will give you the best results, dark chocolate sets up the best, and I think it gives you the best texture for this icing.

If you are worried about the icing being too bitter, I personally don’t think it is bitter, but if you hate dark chocolate you might

If you are worried about this, you can add extra icing sugar. So as the ingredients are melting, taste it, if it tastes bitter to you, mix in some more sugar.

HOWEVER if you really did want to use milk chocolate instead. I recommend halving the amount of cream in the recipe. So instead of using 180ml, use 90ml instead.

Since milk chocolate already has dairy in it, if you use the full amount of cream, the icing will be way too thin.

With that being said I need to be honest, I have not tried doing this. So I don’t know if the texture will be exactly the same. So I think dark chocolate is best, but milk chocolate will work if you really wanted to use it.

So once you have melted the ingredients together in a pot, I like to sieve it to get out any lumps that might have formed. Then I leave it to set in the fridge.

This might take some time, this is why we are making it first.

Your icing will be a liquid at first, but after some time in the fridge, it will end up turning into a thick spreadable icing.

If you wanted to speed up this process, you could put it in your freezer instead.

But if you do this, I have 2 things I need to say:

One is to not forget about it. I have done this before and then when I went back to it, it was rock solid. I had to then wait for it to soften.

So don’t forget about it.

And then the second thing I want to say is…mix the icing every now and then.

When you use a freezer to let things set, it makes things set a little unevenly.

So I recommend every 10 or 15 minutes, give your icing a mix, then put it back into the freezer. This way you won’t end up with a fudge icing that has lumps of icing that is super set, and lumps of icing that is not as set…I hope that makes sense.

It will just give you a smoother icing, that is all I needed to say.

Whiles the fudge icing is setting, we can make the cake layer.

Here are the ingredients I used for this:

• Unsalted butter – we’re using self-raising flour in this cake, a lot of self-raising flours already have salt added into them. So it’s best to use unsalted butter.
• Oil – this is going to add a lot of moisture. Any flavourless oil works but I like to use vegetable oil.
• Granulated sugar – caster sugar works too.
• Vanilla extract
• Eggs
• Self raising flour
• Milk – it’s best to use whole milk

If you live in a place where it’s hard to get self-raising flour, you can use plain/all purpose flour instead.

I like to use self-raising flour just because it already has the raising agents mixed into it, so I don’t have to add it in myself.

But again if you don’t have it, plain/all purpose flour works great.

Just use the same amount, but mix 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/8 teaspoon of salt into it.

Once your cake layer has baked and cooled, add the set fudge icing on top, then it is done.

If you don’t eat this all at once, the best way to store it is in an airtight container.

Just cut slices and add them into a container. Then you can either leave them at room temperature for about 2 days, or instead, you can leave them in your fridge for about 5 days!

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