Seriously Chocolatey Chocolate Cake

Not only am I a chilli fiend, but also definitely a chocolate fiend. So, I spent a good while looking for a nice cake to bake for Easter. I considered trying my Mum’s recipe for a beetroot chocolate cake – she promises that it tastes far better than it sounds – or a carrot cake. Instead I went with what I really wanted: a big, fat chocolate cake. After all, it is Easter – a time for indulgence after 40 days of giving things up for Lent (I gave up giving things up).

Anyway, I found a recipe for an Ultimate Chocolate Cake by Angela Nilsen but reduced the amount of sugar and butter because after weighing up the ingredients, I decided that I didn’t want this cake to be the single reason for giving myself and my housemates heart attacks and diabetes. Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

The Cake
200g dark chocolate (I used Lindt’s 85% cocoa bar)
150g unsalted butter
85g self raising flour
85g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
100g muscovado sugar
150g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
75ml buttermilk

The Icing
200g dark chocolate (I used Lindt’s dark cherry chocolate but any will do)
260ml double cream
1 tablespoon of caster sugar

I used two round cake tins, 7 inches diameter.

Method

Butter the cake tins and pre-heat the oven to gas mark 3 or 160 degrees.

Melt 200g of the chocolate. You could do this by boiling a saucepan of water, then placing a heatproof bowl over the saucepan and put the broken up chocolate squares into the bowl. When the chocolate is melting, add the butter and stir until it’s all melted together.

Put the self raising and plain flour into a mixing bowl, along with the bicarb of soda and the sugars. Mix these ingredients together with your hands, removing any lumps that you feel.

Beat the eggs in a bowl and add the buttermilk to them. Add the egg mixture and the melted chocolate to the flour and sugar. Stir the mixture until smooth. It won’t be very runny, but nor should it be too tough so add a drop more of buttermilk if you think it needs it.

Pour into your tin or tins, whack it in the oven and bake for about 1 hour 25 minutes. When cooked, you should be able to stab a skewer through the cake without it leaving any cake mixture on it. If it does, just cook it for a few more minutes and check again.

Let the cake cool down completely before you add any icing to it, otherwise the chocolate in the icing will melt while you try to get it to stay on the cake.

If you made the cake in one tin, you might want to cut it into two pieces, or not – it’s your choice! I made two sections so that I could add some of the icing in the middle.

To make the icing – warm up the cream in a saucepan but don’t boil or burn it! When it’s very warm add the sugar then break up the chocolate and stir it in until melted and smooth.

Let the icing cool a little then spread a bit on the top of the bottom layer. Sandwich the layers together. Pour the rest of the icing over the top of the cake and spread it around the sides.

As you can see from the photos, I’m terrible at icing cakes but the mess doesn’t bother me – it’s the taste that matters! I added some Mini Eggs, as it’s Easter, and some chocolate sprinkles.