Chocolate Buttermilk Cake (Edmonds)

Looking at the blog, we have made A LOT of chocolate cakes over the years! From the Kidlet's beloved Mississippi mud pie to our recent adventures with Texas sheet cake, cupcakes (in various flavours), snack cakes, mug cakes, Bundt cakes (including the formidable tunnel of fudge), sourdough cakes, flourless cakes, square cakes, round cakes... even train-shaped cakes! Not to mention the phenomenal chocolate pecan torte or the double chocolate banana bread recipes that we've got kicking around. So, what I'm saying is that we really like our chocolate cakes¹.

Given that, I know I don't really need any more chocolate cake recipes. We've already got lots of great ones. But I haven't tried all the Edmonds cake recipes yet! And I had some buttermilk in the fridge that really wanted using up. So this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out a new chocolate cake recipe!

It's actually written as a gluten-free recipe using "Edmonds gluten free plain flour". But, since none of us are celiac or otherwise avoiding gluten at the moment, I just made it with regular soft (pastry) flour.

The icing was nice and easy to make. And the relative lack of butter meant that it tolerated my impatience well when I spread it onto a still-warm cake. I did end up needing to add a lot more wet ingredients than the recipe called for though. I used ~30% more butter and twice as much milk as called for. Plus I added a tsp. of vanilla extract! It was fine once the extra milk went in though. Just be careful with how much you use and add it in very small increments so that you don't overshoot.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

Slightly adapted form Edmonds Cookery Book

Ingredients

Cake

• 1/2 c. butter²
• 125g dark chocolate
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 c. buttermilk
• 3 large eggs
• 1 3/4 c. 1:1 gluten-free flour or soft (plain/standard/pastry) flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground

Icing

• 190g icing (confectioners'/powdered) sugar
• 1/3 c. cocoa powder³
• 2 Tbsp. butter, softened
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2-3 Tbsp. milk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease and flour a 22cm (9") round cake tin. (Use cocoa powder instead of flour if you want to be fancy.)
2. Melt the butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring often.
3. Remove from heat and mix in sugar.
4. Stir in buttermilk and eggs.
5. Sift the flour, baking powder, and baking soda into the pot. Add the salt on top.
6. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
8. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 40-45 minutes.
9. Remove from oven and cool in tin for 10 minutes.
10. Turn cake out onto wire rack to finish cooling.
11. Meanwhile, sift the icing sugar and the cocoa together.
12. Use a wooden spoon to mix in the butter, vanilla, and 1 Tbsp. of the milk.
13. Add the remaining milk 1/2 tsp. at a time until desired consistency is achieved.
14. Once cake has cooled, transfer it to a platter and spread the icing in an even layer over the top and sides.

---

¹ And cake-adjacent baked goods. I didn't even get into all the brownies and chocolate cookies and various other things that we've made over the years. ^Back
2 I used unsalted butter, but I believe that salted is standard for most Kiwi recipes. Either is probably fine in this case. ^Back
3 I used Dutched/alkalized cocoa for this, but natural cocoa is also fine here. ^Back