We came across this brilliant recipe from Nigella Lawson for chocolate cake.
INGREDIENTS
For the cake:
200g plain flour
200g caster sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
40g best quality cocoa
175g soft unsalted butter
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
150 ml sour cream
For the icing:
75g unsalted butter
175g best quality chocolate broken into pieces (Nigella's recipe calls for dark but we used milk chocolate)
1 tablespoon golden syrup
125 ml sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Method:
All ingredients should be room temperature so take out of fridge beforehand.
Preheat oven to gas mark4 or 180C and line and butter two 20cm sandwich tins, preferably tins with removable bases.
Put all the cake ingredients - flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb, eggs, vanilla and sour cream in food processor and process until it's a smooth, thick batter. We don't have a food processor so we used a hand mixer - works just as well.
Divide batter between the two prepared tins and bake until a thin skewer comes out clean which should be about 35 mins although start checking at 25 mins.
It's a good idea to switch cake tins around halfway through cooking time.
Remove cake tins and place on a wire rack and leave to cool for 10 mins before
turning out of tins. Don't worry if there are a few cracks you can fill them in with icing later.
To make the icing -
Melt butter and chocolate in a bowl suspended over a pan of simmering water or microwave. Go slowly - don't burn it!
While choc/butter is cooling, sieve icing sugar into another bowl to get out lumps.
Add golden syrup to choc/butter mixture followed by sour cream, vanilla and when all combined add the icing sugar.
To get right consistency you may need to add a little boiling water or even some more sifted icing sugar. We left it for a few mins in the fridge, to thicken up a bit. Spoon a third of the mixture into the centre of the cake and spread evenly and sandwich together. Spread the rest of the icing over the cake and go mad! We added some birds nests and little Easter eggs. The birds nests are made of melted chocolate and shredded wheat.
