Chocolate & muscovado fudge cake
SERVES
10
PEOPLE
PREP TIME
30
MINUTES
COOKING TIME
40
MINUTES
CUISINE
COURSE
Baking
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/16O°C fan/gas 4. Grease a 20cm round springform cake tin with oil and line the base with baking paper.
Put all the icing ingredients except the chocolate into a saucepan with 60ml cold water. Heat until everything is melted, making sure the mixture doesn’t boil, then turn off the heat, add the chocolate at once and leave it to sit. After about a minute, the chocolate should have melted. Whisk until you have a thick icing and set aside. It should be cool by the time the cake has baked and cooled.
For the cake, whisk the flour, bicarbonate of soda, a good pinch of sea salt and the cocoa together in a bowl. Make sure there are no lumps of bicarbonate of soda.
In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, 375mI of just-boiled water, the oil and vinegar. Stir the mixture into the dry ingredients, then pour into the prepared tin (it will be quite a wet batter). Bake for 30-40 minutes.
When it is ready, the cake should have pulled away from the edges of the tin and a skewer inserted into the centre will come out clean. Cool for 30 minutes in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Spoon over the icing and decorate as you like.
Decoration ideas:
Grated chocolate
Fresh flowers
Chopped candied nuts
Chopped stem ginger
Crumbled chocolate
Flakes of sea salt
Extracted from One pot, pan, planet by Anna Jones, published by Harper Collins. Photography © Issy Croker
Ingredients
For the icing:
100g olive, coconut or vegetable oil
65g dark muscovado sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
200g dark chocolate finely chopped
For the cake:
200g plain or light spelt flour
1 ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
75g cocoa powder
250g dark muscovado sugar
75g olive, coconut or vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing
1 ½ tsp vinegar (I use cider)
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C/16O°C fan/gas 4. Grease a 20cm round springform cake tin with oil and line the base with baking paper.
Put all the icing ingredients except the chocolate into a saucepan with 60ml cold water. Heat until everything is melted, making sure the mixture doesn’t boil, then turn off the heat, add the chocolate at once and leave it to sit. After about a minute, the chocolate should have melted. Whisk until you have a thick icing and set aside. It should be cool by the time the cake has baked and cooled.
For the cake, whisk the flour, bicarbonate of soda, a good pinch of sea salt and the cocoa together in a bowl. Make sure there are no lumps of bicarbonate of soda.
In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, 375mI of just-boiled water, the oil and vinegar. Stir the mixture into the dry ingredients, then pour into the prepared tin (it will be quite a wet batter). Bake for 30-40 minutes.
When it is ready, the cake should have pulled away from the edges of the tin and a skewer inserted into the centre will come out clean. Cool for 30 minutes in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Spoon over the icing and decorate as you like.
Decoration ideas:
Grated chocolate
Fresh flowers
Chopped candied nuts
Chopped stem ginger
Crumbled chocolate
Flakes of sea salt
Extracted from One pot, pan, planet by Anna Jones, published by Harper Collins. Photography © Issy Croker
