Chocolate Nutella Layer Cake

This cake is definitely a winner - the cake itself is so moist and the icing is lighter, fluffy and delicious.  It's definitely one I'll make again and again!

Recipe adapted from: Sweetapolita
Ingredients - 20 cm (8 inch) cake
285g flour
470g caster sugar
90g cocoa powder
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
300mL buttermilk
180mL coffee (I use instant granules and hot water)
160mL vegetable oil (I use canola oil)
3 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla essence

Ingredients - Nutella icing
565g icing sugar
340g butter (room temperature)
280g Nutella
180mL sour cream
330g dark chocolate
1 tbsp vanilla essence
Pinch of salt

Method - cake
1. Preheat the oven to 175 C (350 F).  Butter three 21cm cake tins and line the bottoms with baking paper.  Using more tins helps your cakes bake quicker and more evenly.

2. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, caster sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt) in an electric mixer with the whisk attachment.

3. In another bowl, combine the rest of the cake ingredients (buttermilk, coffee, oil, eggs and vanilla).  Beat them gently, make sure to break up the egg yolks.

4. Add the wet mixture to the dry and mix until fully combined.  The batter should be pourable and runny.

5. Separate the batter between the cake tins (if you're using three tins, each should have about 600g of batter) and bake for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs.

6. Let the cakes cool in the tins, then invert them onto wire racks.

Method - Nutella icing
1. This is seriously easy.  Melt the chocolate, when once it's a little cool, put all the icing ingredients in a food processor.  Process until the icing is smooth.

2. Refrigerate the icing for about 15 minutes, until it's a good spreadable consistency.

Method - assembly

1. On your desired cake plate, layer up the completely cooled cake layers with a generous helping of the Nutella icing in between each layer.

2. Finish off by completely icing the outside of the cake, and decorate to your tastes (or leave it plain - that looks good, too!)  I decorated this cake with silver and blue cachous, as well as small silver sprinkles.

Enjoy!