Hello dear readers,

I apologise profusely for the lack of posts recently. I am learning how to teach English as a foreign language so things are a little tense at the moment! Hopefully you can forgive me! This recipe ought to sway you…

This is the cake recipe for emergency dinner guests. You know, the people who turn up unexpectedly and expect food and drink. It takes about 5 minutes to bang together and then does its thing in the oven whilst you organise the rest of the meal. Genius. It’s adapted from Nigella’s Feast book which I just love love love.

Feast is the book I look at for inspiration, to find out about celebration traditions and for general food porn. Nigella can do little wrong and this book is just fabulous. The fact that there is an entire chapter devoted just to chocolate cake should explain why I love this so much.  

This is a store-cupboard recipe. Which is great because I discovered we have completely run out of 70% chocolate of any kind. The only chocolate in the house was the trashy, sweet, milky plain milk chocolate. Great for snacking on, not so great in desserts. But it’s okay because Nigella has a cocoa based recipe here to which you add chocolate chips. Yay! Crisis solved. Now if I can just think of what to serve as the main meal…

Chocolate Dessert Cake
Adapted from Feast
175g unsalted butter, soft
275g caster sugar
2 eggs
200g cake flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb
50g cocoa powder
splash of vanilla
80ml buttermilk
125ml boiling water
175g chocolate chips (either dark or milk)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a large loaf tin with baking paper.
Cream the butter and the sugar together until white and fluffy. Add in the eggs and beat to combine.
Add the vanilla followed by the dry ingredients. Lastly add in the buttermilk followed by the boiling water. Allow to beat for 3 minutes until the mixture is smooth. (The mixture will initially be quite lumpy so this is an important stage.)

Remove from the mixer and fold in the chocolate chips.

Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for about an hour. You want the cake to be cooked but not overdone. The cake should be stable but it’s okay if there is some batter on the skewer.

After about 45 minutes, make the syrup.
125ml boiling water
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

Bring the ingredients to the boil and reduce to a thick syrup.

When the cake is cooked, remove it from the oven. Pour the syrup over it evenly. Allow to cool. After 15 minutes turn out of the tin and cool on a rack.
Great served with ice-cream, cream or crémé fraîche.

 The princess and the unavailable M say they would eat the cake out of the trash. Need I say more?