Since travelling in South America, my love for avocados has grown and grown. I have always liked avocado but never imagined having them in anything other than salads and guacamole. How wrong was I!!! In Peru, they use avocado in nearly EVERYTHING. From smoothies to cakes and this is the theme for my next blog post. I wanted to rustle something up which used avocado and the best way I could do that is mixing it with my all-time favourite, CHOCOLATE!

This is how you make the scrummiest, creamiest and just completely delicious chocolate cake with avocado butter cream.

To start with, you will need to make the chocolate cake base:

Ingredients;

–          Non-stick spray for your baking tin

–          200g Butter at room temperature

–          4 free range eggs

–          200g caster sugar

–          140g plain flour

–          Pinch of salt

–          60g good quality cocoa powder

–          2 tsp baking powder

Avocado Butter Cream;

–          2 medium ripe avocados

–          200g unsalted butter at room temperature

–          500g Icing Sugar

–          Juice of half a lemon

–          1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Method;

Set the oven to 180C and spray your baking tin with the non-stick spray or you can use vegetable oil. I usually use 2 loaf tins for this cake as it works well for the presentation. Place your butter in a clean, dry bowl and mix until the butter has gone from a yellow colour to a pale cream colour. The consistency should be smooth. The mixing should take around 5 minutes, once this is done, add the sugar to the butter and whisk well, until the consistency has become light and fluffy. Once all of the sugar has been fully incorporated, add the eggs one at a time ensuring that with each addition, the mixture is mixed well, do not worry if the texture of the mix appears to be splitting as it will all come together really soon.  In a separate bowl add the flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder. The bowl with the flour will be known as the dry mixture and the bowl with the butter will be known as the wet mixture. Add 1/3 at a time of the dry mixture to the wet mixture ensuring that all the ingredients have been stirred in well before the next addition.  Once you have everything in one bowl, pour into your baking tin/s and set in the oven. The baking time for this cake is around 35 minutes but make sure you keep checking as there is a very fine line between a perfectly cooked cake and a burnt cake. The way you check if your cake is ready is insert a skewer into the centre of the cake and if it comes out clean, then you are ready to go. When removing the cake from the oven, set it aside in the baking tin for 10 minutes, once this time has flown by, remove the cake and leave it to cool fully on a wire cooling rack.

Now is the fun part, making the butter cream;

Place the butter into a clean, dry bowl and mix in the same way as you mixed the butter for the cake batter. Once the colour turns from its usual yellow colour to a pale cream colour then you can add the icing sugar. Ensure that you add the icing sugar a small amount at a time, NOT using an electric mixer as your kitchen will turn from its usual colour to white. Icing sugar is a murder to clean so be careful. Once you have mixed all of the icing sugar into the butter then you can use an electric mixer. Once the consistency is smooth and looks like butter cream, in a separate bowl, add the avocado, lemon juice and vanilla extract and mash it up well. Once the avocado mix is smooth, then you can add to the butter cream. Stir well and there you go, you have an avocado butter cream.

Assembling the cake is tricky, I like to cut two fingers from the cake and place a nice sized dollop of butter cream into the centre creating a sandwich type effect. Decorate with icing sugar and there you have it, a chocolate cake with avocado butter cream.

ENJOY!