Less is More, Unless it's chocolate and my foolproof chocolate cake recipe

As a child chocolate had to be Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and for a long time afterwards... I'm glad to say that my taste in chocolate (unlike me) is gradually getting a little more sophisticated and now it has to be Green & Black's Organic chocolate with 6o% cocoa solids with crystallised ginger...mmm...

Chocolate is supposed to be one of the few treats that is actually good for us and apparently the higher the cocoa content, the better. I don't think I can go any higher than 60% as it does get more bitter the higher it is and even then I do have to have it loaded with the sweet crystallised ginger, which makes an amazing combination. Maybe chocolate is a bit like Marmite...you have to gradually build up to the strength you can eat.

This is all beside the point. What I was trying to say is that one of my sisters 'P' and her husband 'J' was coming for the weekend and so along with roasting a duck, baking a chocolate cake was in order.

Here is my foolproof recipe:

Ingredients:

7oz of self raising flour.
1 tsp of baking powder.
2 Large eggs
5oz soft butter or margarine.
5oz of golden caster sugar. (It's lovely with half muscovado sugar)
1.5oz of cocoa powder
3 tablespoons of milk.
2 tablespoons of made coffee.
A little cinnamon.
A little vanilla extract.

Method:

• Heat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade (350f or gas mark 4) a little cooler if a fan oven.
• Prepare a six inch cake tin with oil and a dusting of flour.
• Cream together the butter and sugar.
• Beat in the eggs one at a time.
• Sift the flour, cinnamon, cocoa and baking powder and fold into the butter and sugar.
• Add the coffee and milk.
• Pour into the tin and bake for 35 to 40 minutes.
• Test with a skewer to ensure the centre is cooked although still moist.
• Leave in the tin for five minutes and then turn onto a cake rack to cool.

Now for the fun part. I cut mine in half to make two thin cakes and then spread with filling. I like chocolate or chocolate and hazelnut spread. But there are lots of other options, like jam or whipped cream sweetened with a little icing sugar or butter cream. Which I haven't been able to stomach since I made a chocolate log in a cookery class at school that was covered with chocolate butter icing and ate most of it.

Put the top back on and decorate the outside. You can use chocolate spread for the sides and then roll in crushed nuts or flaked chocolate. Ice the top with ganache or chocolate icing. Or you can keep the sides plain and just pour drizzly icing over the top and leave dribbles running down the sides. yummy...

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of mine, it got eaten before I had a chance to take any. We were so hungry I didn't even get to ice the outside we just wolfed it down with home made ice cream after the roast duck and trimmings...I'll tell you about that another time...