The Ultimate Chocolate Cake Recipe

My brother hates fruit cake. So growing up we always had alternatives on special occasions. What could suit the greatest of occasions than an ultra rich and chocolate-y treat? This is our family favourite. The Ultimate Chocolate Cake.

The Ultimate Chocolate Cake

This cake is not to be taken lightly. It is quite easy to make, but the ingredients can be quite expensive.

You will need:

For the cake

• 200g good quality dark chocolate (at least 60% cocoa solids)
• 200g butter
• 1 tbsp instant coffee granules
• 85g self raising flour
• 85g plain flour
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 200g light muscovado sugar
• 200g golden caster sugar
• 25g cocoa powder
• 3 medium eggs
• 75ml buttermilk

For the ganache

• 200g dark chocolate
• 284ml double cream
• 2 tbsp golden caster sugar

Method

1. Butter and line the sides and base of a 20cm cake tin. I’ve found that if you line the sides high, you can fold the extra over the top of the cake after and hour and it stops it from burning. Also, I have also made this cake in 2 separate tins instead of having to cut after cooling.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 3 / 140C Fan / 160C Conventional / 280F
3. Break the cake chocolate into small pieces and place into a pan, add the butter, 100ml (4 Fluid Oz) of water and the coffee granules. Heat until just melted but don’t overheat.
4. Sieve the two flours into a bowl. Add the bicarbonate, sugars and cocoa and mix until there are no lumps (the sugar tends to clump). Beat the eggs and stir in the buttermilk (I’ve also just used normal milk as I don’t always have buttermilk in). Pour the egg mixture and the melted chocolate mixture in with the flour/sugar mix. Mix it all together until it is a smooth runny and well blended consistency.
5. Pour this into the tin/s and bake for 90 minutes. Test with a skewer once cooked, it should come out clean. Leave this to cool.

Make the ganache

1. Break the ganache chocolate into small pieces and place into a heatproof bowl.
2. Pour the cream into a pan, add the caster sugar and heat until almost boiling.
3. Pour the hot cream onto the chocolate in the bowl and mix until smooth.

You may need to wait a while until the ganache has cooled enough before you use it to sandwich and ice your cake.

Depending on how good you are at using the ganache to give it a perfect finish you may be happy to leave it at that. However, my attempts in the past have sometime been a little rough to say the least. So these days I use more chocolate, biscuits and other sweets to decorate my cake. And this can often ramp up the cost of the cake even more.

However, it does make the cake more personalised. In recent years this has been a perfect special birthday cake, Christmas cake, and it even served as 2 layers for my brother’s wedding cake!

Serve it with cream or ice cream. But take care, you won’t need a lot.

Do tell me what you think. This cake certainly makes it onto my Happy List

And do you love festive cakes? Then check out these cute Christmas cakes from Tahnee

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