Triple-Chocolate Cake

Cake

Mix dry ingredients first, except chocolate chips. Add wet ingredients and mix until smooth. You should have a runny batter. Grease a baking tin – an average bread pan will be more than large enough for this. It’s a tiny cake. Pour in half of batter, sprinkle half of chocolate chips. Repeat with other halves. (This should keep all the chips from SINKING TO THE BOTTOM.) Preheat the oven to 350F/180C and bake for ~30m, until a toothpick stuck in it comes out clean.

Frosting

Soften the butter by leaving it out for a couple of hours. Smoosh it up in a straight-sided bowl that’ll hold at least 2c. Add the shortening and blend until you have a smooth, single-coloured mass. Blend in the cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Add the sugar a little at a time, blending it in until you can’t see it. Add the cream 1T at time, blending it in until you have a smooth, thick chocolate gunk. If it’s too thin to work with, toss it in the fridge for a few minutes, to stiffen it up a bit. Unlike a true buttercream, a stabilised frosting will not get SOLID if you leave it in the fridge, so don’t worry about that. It might get a little too stiff to work with, but a couple of minutes on the counter will loosen it up again.