I have found a perfect no-fail chocolate cake recipe and believe it or not I have made it 8 times in the last one month. One weekend, back to back thrice because we had guests and everyone wanted to take home a part of the cake. It is a wonderfully moist cake and stays that way easily for 2-3 days.

My best friend’s son completed a year two weeks back and I wanted to bake a cake for his party. And hence this beautiful, very easy kit-kat cake was on top of my list. My baker friend Ruby from Cakes my Passion pointed me out to this Hershey’s recipe and I can’t thank her enough. Because when I decided to make the cake, I had no idea what should be the height of these cakes so that it matches the length of the kitkat bars. And how many kitkats would I require, will they stick? What about the frosting? Hope it wont melt in the heat. How to prevent the kitkats from smudging? And so on. But here are some tips which I figured out along the way.

So here it is, recipe and the frosting technique.

Kit-kat Chocolate cake

What you will need:

1 and 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (maida)

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups castor sugar

2 eggs

1 cup full fat milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil, I use rice-bran, but any unflavored oil is fine

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water

Frosting :

2/3 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup butter

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Decoration :

20-22 individual sticks of kitkat

30-40 gems or M&Ms

What to do :

Preheat oven to 160C for 5 minutes. Prepare two 8 inch pans. Line the bottoms with a parchment paper and butter the sides and dust it with some all purpose flour. Now sift together all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder and keep it aside. Take two eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk it till it turns pale and creamy. To the egg mixture add the milk, vanilla extract and vegetable oil and whisk a couple of times. Alternately add the flour mixture and the boiling water to the egg mixture and whisk till it is all incorporated together. Always start and end with dry ingredients i.e the flour mixture. The batter will be thin, but the boiling water ensures that all the flour is incorporated properly. Pour it equally into the prepared pans and bake for 30-35 minutes till a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven, let it cool for 10 minutes. Release the cake from the sides and turn it onto a cooling rack. let it cool completely before frosting. To make the frosting, melt butter and add in all the ingredients and whisk them together till it forms a smooth frosting. It makes about 2 cups of frosting, which is perfect for this cake with a little leftover. Frost the cake and line it with kitkats. Spreads gems on top.

Notes :

Keep the kitkats in the refrigerator for an hour before using them to prevent any smudges.

If not eating on the same day, then keep the cake in the fridge once frosted so that it stays for a long time. (The frosting contains milk so it has to be refrigerated)

The It is better to use 8 inch cake pans so that the height of the kitkat bars gets evenly matched with the cakes stacked on each other.

After sticking the kitkats, tie it with a thin ribbon or plastic thread for a while so that it sets.

You can make the base cake a day in advance so that it cools totally before frosting and the crumbs settle down.

How to frost a cake :