“He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”
― In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
In our household chocolate cake is certainly more celebratory than guilt because we don't consume it in large quantities and so frequently that it may convert into guilt. One of the few things under cakes category that my hubby likes to eat is a good chocolate cake. I have tried many recipes on him and this "Take Home Chocolate cake" from Ottolenghi's book sweet came a close second in the list. He is a fussy eater, very hard to please and my best critic so I have to be honest when sharing his reviews and my opinions here with you. I will be revealing the recipe that made it to the top of his list in my next blog post.
The result of this recipe was a moist, dense and fudgy, almost like a brownie but slightly drier. If you are into that kind of cake then this is your recipe. It wasn't as wet or moist as a brownie probably 20% less wetter texture. I did have to bake it longer than 60 minutes in my gas oven and I turned it around towards the last 10 minutes to achieve even bake. The ganache however was really easy to make and we both fell in love with it.
Take home chocolate cake
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 60 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
- Category: Cake
- Method: Baking
Description
A moist fudgy chocolate cake. Adapted from Ottolenghi's book Sweet.
Ingredients
For Cake :
- 250 gm unsalted butter
- 200g dark chocolate (70% cocoa recommended)
- 1.5 tsp instant coffee granules dissolved in 350 ml boiling water
- 250g caster sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 240g self-raising flour
- 30g cocoa powder plus 1.5 tsp extra for dusting
- ¼ tsp salt
For chocolate ganache :
- 200g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
- 200 ml double cream
- 1 tbsp golden syrup
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
Instructions
Bake the Cake:
- Preheat the oven to 170 deg C/150 deg C/Gas Mark 3. Grease a round cake tin of diameter 23 cm and line with baking parchment and leave it to one side ready for later to fill with cake batter.
- Dice the butter into 2 cm cubes and chop the dark chocolate into pieces of 2 cm so they can dissolve easily. Lightly beat the eggs and set aside. Combine butter, dark chocolate and hot coffee in a large bowl and mix well. Add the sugar and whisk well until dissolved. Whisk the vanilla extract and lightly beaten eggs into this same bowl until well combined and smooth.
- In a separate bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder and salt , combine well.
- Add the dry ingredients from step 3 into the bowl of wet ingredients. The batter will appear very liquid like but do not worry as the recipe expects it to be so.
- Pour the cake mixture into the cake tin that was prepped in Step 1 and bake for about 60 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. There might be few cracks on the crust of the cake but again this is normal and let the cake cool down for 20-30 minutes before turning it out of the tin.
Make the Gananche:
- Blitz the dark chocolate into fine powder in a food processor. Do not detach food processor as the next step happens in the food processor itself. If you don't have a food processor then you can do this in a bowl with help of wooden spatula.
- Place a small pan over medium high heat and pour double cream + golden syrup, heat this mixture till you see light bubbles appear on the walls of the pan. Turn it off before it reaches a boil and take it off the heat immediately.
- Take the hot mixture from step 2 and pour into the running food processor in a steady stream, then add the butter and process until well combined and smooth.
- Set this mixture aside in a bowl covered with a clingfilm actually touching the top of the mixture. This can be poured over the cake when liquid to achieve a shiny coating. You can leave this until it has reached the consistency you like and then use it to ice the cake. Ideally leave it for 2 hours for a thicker consistency
Keywords: chocolate cake, fudgy chocolate cake, moist chocolate cake
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