Moist Chocolate Cake

After a quick dinner of Szechuan chicken and stir-fried vegetables, we were all craving for some chocolate cake so the challenge was to find a chocolate cake recipe that I could whip up in an hour with the ingredients I had.

I reached for the encyclopedic How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman and found a simple recipe for either chocolate cake or devil's food cake but I had to whip the egg whites and that was just too much to do at 9:00 p.m. plus we had just run out fresh milk. Nigel Slater's  The Kitchen Diaries came next but his version was a dense chocolate cake that was more mousse-like than cakey.  Finally I flipped through Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2 and found what I was looking for in the whole chapter on all things chocolate.  A simple moist cake using just seven ingredients, all of which I had.  The cake came out of the oven at almost 11:00 p.m. and after waiting for it to cool, it was perfect for a pre-midnight snack.  

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Moist Chocolate Cake

from Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2

• 300 grams dark chocolate, chopped (*I used Lindt 70% chocolate bars)
• 250 grams unsalted butter (cut up into chunks)
• 5 eggs
• 1/2 cup caster (superfine) sugar
• 1 1/4 cups plain all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 cup almond meal (ground almonds)

• Preheat the oven to 150C (300F).  Place the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over low heat and stir until melted and smooth.  Set aside.
• Place the eggs and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 8-10 minutes until pale and thick.
• Sift the flour an baking powder over the egg mixture and gently fold through with the almond meal and chocolate mixture.
• Line the base of a 23 cm (9 inch) round cake tin with non-stick baking paper.  (*I used a loose-bottomed cake tin lined with parchment paper)
• Pour in the mixture and bake for 50 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer.
• Cool in the tin.
• Spread the cooled cake with chocolate fudge icing, if desired.  (*I left mine unglazed and ate a slice with some ice cream instead)
• Serves 10