Surprise Chocolate Heart Cake for First Kolkata Blogger's meet!

The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Surprise!!
All of us love surprises. At least the good ones.

When I was in school, it was a norm to surprise each other with little handmade personalized stuff, you know, the kind of things girl's do. Birthdays, in fact, is the most perfect occasion to surprise. Vishal has many a times surprised me with the most gorgeous bunch of flowers, sweet handwritten cards and delicious fingerlicking food. Therefore, it is no secret that I love getting and giving Surprises!

Sayantani, surprised me a month back by adding me to Kolkata Food Bloggers page on FB. I have always wanted to know like minded people in my city and was wondering if there are any. I was completely surprised and bowled over, knowing such famous bloggers admist them. A meet was decided and we all jointly agreed on the 28 of April. Not knowing what else to gift them, the Mad Baker in me, decided to bake this Surprise Chocolate heart cake which has been lying in my 'Must try' list for some time. A surprise cake to surprise fellow bloggers sounded so right.
Vishal helped me by looking after our daughter Vaanya, while I was rustling up this cake on the 'D' day. The cake takes that extra time as it is baked twice making you to do the entire process two times. I chose on a tried and tested 'no butter' cake recipe that I have adapted from Suma Rowjee's blog Cakes and Bakes. The cake always turns out soft and has just that right amount of sweetness.
I was pretty surprised myself with the end result as this was a first time bake. The sweet little pretty chocolate heart was right there in the middle of my cake surprising me to ends. The extra time I spent baking and then wrapping up these beauties made me late for the much awaited meet. But I guess the surprised faces paid off for all the hard work. Felt truly elated to bake this for my fellow buddies. 

It was an afternoon well spent knowing and meeting such amazing bloggers. We had a whale of time and plan another meet very soon, catching up with all those who could not this time. I have linked their names to their famous blogs for you to check out their amazing food. 
Meet the Foodies!!

From left to right : Sanoli Ghosh, Archita Chanda Ray, Kamalika Chakrabarty, Sarani Tarafder, Arundhuti Rama, Poorna Banerjee

Ingredients:

Chocolate hearts

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar, powdered(Do not skip the 2 tbsp, they make the cake just sweet)
• 1 egg 
• 1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil 

Procedure:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Prepare the loaf tin by greasing and lining with butter paper.
Since my loaf tin was bigger in size than my requirement, I made a false wall with foil paper and stuffed lightly crushed foil paper in the leftover space to make the cake size smaller. 

Sift flour, sugar, cocoa powder,baking powder and baking soda in a bowl.
Whisk together yogurt, oil and egg in another bowl.
Fold in this wet mixture into the flour mixture.  Mix well.
Pour into prepared pan.
Bake  for 30 mins or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack.
Once your cake is cool enough to handle, remove the dome of the cake (level it)and cut into 8 slices.

Now, with the help of a cookie cutter, cut shapes out of the slices.(I used a heart cookie cutter, you may try with other shapes like a star) 
 

Grease and line the same loaf tin again.
Stack the hearts in the middle of the tin, a little tilted to rest.

 

Now prepare the white cake batter
White cake batter

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cup sugar(powdered) 
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/4 cup yogurt
• 1/2 cup+2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla essence  

Procedure :

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl.

Whisk together yogurt, oil, vanilla essence and egg in another bowl. 

Fold in this wet mixture into the flour mixture. Mix well.

Pour into prepared tin over the chocolate hearts. 

Bake  for 30-35 mins or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. 

Cool on a wire rack and remove from tin

White cake batter poured over the chocolate hearts

The cake after baking

Level the cake with the help of a knife.

Cut equal sized slices from the cake, serve and surprise.

Note:

• You may use any other cake recipe to make this Surprise cake.
• Try the same effect with a different shaped cookie cutter.
• Try different colours for a more dramatic look, like making the hearts red for a perfect Valentine treat.

I wrapped them in plastic covers and tied the ends with a red ribbon to gift all my wonderful fellow food bloggers. Vishal wrote down little thoughtful tags for them in his beautiful handwriting.

The Gang (Pic courtsey: a passerby clicking through Sarani's camera and Editing courtsey :Arundhuti) Your's truly in Green:)

Happy Surprising 
Amrita