Preheat the oven @ 180 C/350-375 F, 10 mins before baking. Heat together milk, butter, oil & coco powder till the butter melts. Let it cool to room temperature (btw, dont get disappointed if you dont get the dark brown colour at this stage, you will get it once the cake is baked). Add flour, baking soda, sugar & beaten egg to the cooled wet ingredients. Beat it well using an electric beater or hand whisk till it is mixed well. You can either use it to make cupcakes or cake. I made a 9 inch loaf & 10 standard size cupcakes with the above qty. Bake in the preheated oven for 15- 20 mins for the cupcake & 25- 30 mins for the loaf cake. The baking time can vary depending on each oven.
For cupcakes: Line your cupcake tin with paper liners (I use 2 liners per cupcake) & pour 3 tbsp of batter in each case. I’m referring to the standard size muffins here.
For cake: Grease your cake tin well & line with parchment/baking paper. Pour the batter.
For Ganache:
Whipping cream – 1/2 cup
Baking chocolate – 3/4 cup (I usually use Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Chips. You can also use Hershey’s semi sweet chocolate chips for this)
Place the baking chocolate/ chocolate chips in a bowl. Heat the whipping cream on low flame till small bubbles start appearing around the edges. Pour the heated cream to the bowl with choc chips. Let it rest for 5 mins. Whisk it using a manual whisk. This will give you a liquid consistency ganache. If you want to thicken the ganache for spreading, place the bowl on some ice & whip it. It will start thickening. Spread the ganache on cooled cupcakes/cake. Enjoy!
Notes
This is an extremely moist cake, so I wont suggest it for making it as a layer cake. You can store the cake (without ganache/icing) @ room temp for 3-4 days in an air tight container. The original recipe calls for baking powder. But I’ve read somewhere that for chocolate cake, baking soda is good. The explanation for that is Baking soda will react with coco powder and gives a darker colour to the cake. I used castor sugar for the recipe for easy blending of ingredients. However you can use the regular sugar. You can serve this cake as a dessert along with a scoop of your fav ice cream :) Substitution for self raising flour – to get 1 cup self-raising flour, add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder+ 1/4 tsp salt to 1 cup all purpose flour. (source: http://www.joyofbaking.com/IngredientSubstitution.html)