Chocolate cake with Italian meringue icing

I love chocolate cake (who dosen't?) and I love cakes with plenty of icing in it.  I usually help myself generously but start feeling guilty later. Imagine the amount of fat that is getting piled up in the tummy. So I often keep looking for recipes that are lesser in calories.

The recipe for this cake is from Easy Cooking. Since this recipe uses oil instead of butter it is less fatty but tastes very good.

For this cake you will need:

All purpose flour - 3/4 cups

Unsweetened cocoa powder - 1-1/2 tablespoons

Baking powder - 1 tsp

A pinch of salt

Sugar - 1/2 cup

Vanilla essence - 1 tsp

Milk - 1/4 cup

Vegetable or canola oil - 1/4 cup

Egg 1

~Sieve the dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, salt, cocoa powder).

~Beat together oil, milk and eggs until blended well. Add vanilla.

~Add sugar (I always powder the sugar after measuring it to quicken the process)

~Finally add the dry ingredients little at a time and mix until well blended.

~Transfer it to the prepared cake tin and bake. I baked mine at 150 degree C for 40 mins.

~Before removing the cake out of the pan allow it to cool for sometime, otherwise part of the cake will stick to the bottom or it might even break.

~When the cake is completely cooled frost it generously with Italian meringue frosting, which is also a less calorie frosting.

Italian Meringue Frosting

This icing is also called boiled icing. For this icing you need NO BUTTER. Wow!  You are going to make this frosting with only sugar and egg whites. Now, I had known about this recipe earlier but was apprehensive to try it because it involved cooking. But this time I just went ahead and took the plunge. Glad that I did.

You can see how glossy and delicious it looks.

For this bowl of icing I used:

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1 egg white

1/2 tsp vinegar

1/2 tsp vanilla

~Beat the egg white until stiff.

~Combine the sugar with water and vinegar and boil it until you get a soft ball stage.

~When the sugar syrup is ready pour it immediately into the egg white beating constantly.

~You can add vanilla and continue beating until it is stiff enough for spreading. If you feel that it is not stiff enough you can add a teaspoon or two of icing sugar.

~Spread over your cake and indulge guiltlessly (or less guiltly).

The frosting was done and when I was getting ready to photograph it I realized that it looked so plain. It would have been better if there were chocolate shavings or cherries or anything on the top. But I didn't have anything in hand and so I took the scrapes of the cake and put them on top :)

Have fun!