A brief diversion from Home Cooking Made Easy (Lorraine, forgive me) for my birthday. I made the Really easy chocolate cake from Stevie Parle in Saturday’s Telegraph.
Now, fatless sponge this ain’t – it contains a whopping 200g of butter, but it’s very nearly flourless and could be completely if you substituted cocoa powder or ground almonds for the flour. I also made it dairy free by using Pure sunflower margarine and Ryelands (Tesco discount brand) plain chocolate. It really is astonishingly simple, but don’t expect an airy sponge; this is a dense sort of set mousse.
Preheat oven to 180’C (or less for a fan oven) and grease and line a 22cm/8 inch round cake tin.
Melt 200g chocolate and 200g butter in a pyrex bowl over simmering water. But don’t let the bowl touch the water. (Or melt in the microwave using 30 second blasts and stirring in between each one). I used a 2 pint bowl which just about fitted all the rest of the ingredients in. Once melted remove from heat and stir and leave to cool for a couple of minutes.
Then stir in 5 eggs, one by one (whole is fine, just stir hard). Then stir in 150g sugar, then 2 tbsps ground almonds, then 1 tbsp brandy (optional), then 1 tbsp flour. Pour the mixture (yes, it’s very wet) into cake tin and bake for 20 minutes.
The cake rises while cooking:
and then sinks when cooling:
It’s delicate so leave to cool in tin completely before removing (with the help of your trusty palette knife).
Serve dusted with icing sugar and with a dollop of creme fraiche. No creme fraiche for me on my dairy-free diet, but I had a nice cup of tea.
i like your teapot! But i think it’s sad you had to cook your own birthday cake, I’m disappointed in you Nicholas.
He did watch and gave moral support. I’ll try and feature the teapot you gave us in a future post!
What a classy teapot!