Www.taste.com.au is fast becoming my favourite recipe site - after deciding yesterday morning to whip up a nice cake with my lovely boy, I came across this recipe - and it sure did delight. Rich (but not too rich), dense (but not too dense) and moist (but not too moist), this will forever be my go-to chocolate mud cake. It's pretty easy (if a little time consuming) to make, and it will serve heaps of people - I'd say 20! Thank you, Taste!
I'd also like to just put it out there that my new DSLR arrived yesterday in the middle of the baking process (exciting!) so I'll be going a little overboard with the end-product shots ;) Hope you like it!
The original recipe doesn't use any icing, but in the name of decorative creativity, we used a chocolate ganache, which I'll include in the recipe. However, do feel free to simply sprinkle it with cocoa or icing when you're done if you don't want any icing. :)
- 2 1/2 cups caster sugar (yes, I know........ it's worth it.)
- 250g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
- 250g unsalted butter, chopped
- 3/4 cup freshly brewed strong espresso coffee
- 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
- 3/4 cup cocoa powder
- 1 cup almond meal
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 4 eggs, lightly whisked
- 2 tsp vanilla essence
Ganache:
- 200g dark chocolate (but not TOO dark..)
- 1/3 cup thickened cream
Before you start, preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius (on bake), and grease and line the bottom and sides of a 22cm round springform cake tin. I only had a 21cm tin, so I simply poured the excess cake mixture into other miniature tins. I'm not showing them here.
To begin, heat the sugar, chocolate, butter and coffee over a medium-low heat, stirring with a metal spoon (fun fact, you're not meant to use wooden or plastic spoons when melting chocolate, as they retain moisture after being washed - which means that if they come in contact with the melting chocolate, it'll seize, ie do gross things).
Combine the sour cream, eggs and vanilla essence in a separate bowl. A whisk will probably do the trick, as the sour cream doesn't really want to mix..
Sift the flour and cocoa powder together, then stir in the almond meal.
Then, gradually add the flour mix and the egg mix alternately to the chocolate mix, mixing well between additions. Phew, that was a lot of "mix"es. Then once it's all lovely and combined, pour into the cake tin!
Then pop it into the oven for 1 hour and 25 minutes, covering it with foil for about half the time to prevent overbrowning.
BIG IMPORTANT NOTICE: Don't leave it in the oven for longer than the prescribed amount of time! While you may not think it's done, the cake is so dense that even when you take it out of the oven, it'll keep cooking. I made the mistake of misjudging it and left it in for 20 minutes longer than the recipe said, and the cake wasn't as moist as it could have been and had over-cooked on the outer.
When it's done its time in the oven, take it out and let it sit in the tin for 10 minutes.
Turn it out onto a cooling rack to cool completely. This can take quite a while, because as I said before, the cake is really dense. So just keep judging the temperature with a finger to determine if it's sufficiently cooled for you to ice it. But if you're not sure, I'd give it an hour at least.
Once you think the cake is cool enough, you can start making the ganache. Mix the chocolate and cream in a heatproof bowl and set the bowl over a pot of very gently simmering water - only just warm enough to melt the chocolate. Mix with a metal spoon until combined, then take it off the heat immediately and allow it to cool, stirring occasionally, until it's thick and cool enough to be spreadable. Then simply spread over the top of your cake!
ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTICE: If it overheats, the ganache will also do gross things, like going lumpy and separating. However if this happens, don't fret because it is recoverable. Simply add a bit more cream (room temperature), and whisk the hell out of it. Like, whisk as if your life depends on it. It should come back together and end up lovely and smooth again. :)
And there you have it! Your very own, super-dooper delicious chocolate mud cake! It's especially good served warm with ice cream, cream and fruit of some kind - I'd go for strawberries (as shown) or banana. And now for the I've-got-my-new-fancy-camera photo fest. Bon appetit!
Note from before: You can see in this photo that the bottom
outer edge of the cake is a lighter brown than the rest - that's because it's drier because of the over-cooking. Be warned!
