With September comes one of my favourite programmes of the entire year, bake off! I got into the habit of each week on a Tuesday I’d bake something fun for my family and I to eat whilst watching bake-off. The first week I baked cookies – I blogged about those a few weeks ago, and week two I attempted a three-layer chocolate mocha cake. It was a complete disaster and basically I’d converted the ingredients wrong from cups to grams so the recipe was completely out of whack. Not to be put off of baking chocolate cake I gave it another go, this time using a chocolate fudge cake recipe from Olive magazine. It looked super simple, all the ingredients were listed in grams and the image looked so delicious I couldn’t help but give it a go. I was thoroughly chuffed with how well it turned out and my family agreed it was very moreish, light but moist and they told me I’d be a shoe-in for star baker in my own bake-off of me vs me.
The difference in this recipe is that the sponge is made with dark muscovado sugar instead of caster sugar which is what gives it that fudge taste, really delicious and the chocolate icing recipe is one I’m going to keep up my sleeve because its so simple but came out really well!
Ingredients
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self-raising flour 150g
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cocoa 30g
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baking powder 1 tsp
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muscovado sugar 175g
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butter 175g, softened
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eggs 3
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vanilla extract 1 tsp
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dark chocolate 50g, melted
Fudge Icing
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butter 200g, softened
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icing sugar 200g
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dark chocolate 200g, melted
Method
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STEP 1
Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Line and butter 2 x 20cm sandwich tins.
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STEP 2
Put all cake ingredients into your bowl or processor and mix until smooth. If the mix is a little stiff, add 1-2 tbsp water and blend again, I like to add just a dribble of cold black coffee to the mix, it really brings out the flavours in the chocolate. I don’t know where or when I heard this tip but I’ve always done it with chocolate cake and they’ve always tasted really good. Make sure though that the coffee is completely cold before you put it into the mixture other wise it’ll start to cook the eggs and your mixture will curdle.
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STEP 3
Divide between tins, level and bake for 30 minutes or until springy. Leave for 5 minutes then cool on a rack.
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STEP 4
With a clean bowl combine the butter and icing sugar, add the melted chocolate, mix until completely smooth. If the icing is looking a little runny, which mine was, then I just add a table spoon of icing sugar and repeat until it comes together. Also letting it sit in the bowl is a good way to let it firm up, otherwise the butter is just getting hotter and hotter and it’ll only get runnier.
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STEP 5
Place the bottom layer of the cake onto a plate, allow a generous dollop of icing to be spread across the middle, add the other sponge and put the remaining icing on top. I chose to decorate with melted white chocolate and magic stars but at this point you can decorate with anything. Worth noting that this icing is thick enough that you could crumb coat the entire cake if you wanted to, I’d like add an extra third onto the icing recipe for this.
And Voila! Seemingly simple chocolate cake but its a classic for a reason, I’m definitely going to be breaking this recipe out again a lot in the future and it’s the perfect base for mixing it up, you could very easily add white chocolate to the icing instead of dark or add dried rose petals to the top. Another decadent option would be to take fresh cherries and sugar into a saucepan and cook down until it forms a thick sauce, sandwich in the middle and drizzle on top for a sour kick.
Let me know if you try this recipe! Once I’m settled into my new flat I plan on baking a lot more so expect more baking posts as the weeks get cooler – Enjoy! x
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