This is a recipe that we've turned to again and again...and then AGAIN! It isn’t my recipe, so normally I wouldn’t post it, it’s a Mary Berry recipe, and she calls it the Best Ever Chocolate Fudge Cake.
Mary dresses it differently, more grown-up as she lets the chocolate drizzle over the side (as can you!) However for this iteration I cover the cake in icing, then pop 3 x tubes of Smarties all over, and it's been affectionately named the easy peasy chocolate birthday cake in our house, it gets wheeled out for most birthdays and is enjoyed by all ages!
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Total time: 45 mins
Ingredients:
50g cocoa powder
6 tbsn boiling water
3 eggs
50ml milk
175g self-raising flour
1 tspn baking powder
100g soft butter
275g caster sugar
for the icing:
150g dark chocolate
150ml double cream
3 x tubes of Smarties
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 180C / Gas 4
- Grease two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Line each one with a circle of baking paper. (It is worth doing this as makes it easier to get them out!)
- Mix the water and cocoa powder into a paste. Add everything to bowl and whisk with an electric or a hand whisk until smooth.
- Divide into tins and bake for 25-30 mins.
- When cool enough to remove from tins, do so and then set aside and let cool a bit more.
- Once cool, take a bread knife and level off tops of each one. Don’t make icing until the cakes are cool. TIP: You can make the cakes in advance and freeze, or wrap in cling and store in a bread bin or similar.
- Make the icing by very gently melting the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir the cream in and this will cool and thicken it.
- Pop some icing on top of one of the sandwiches. Top that with the other sandwich. Now spoon the icing all over the cake, smoothing as you go.
- Stick the Smarties on whilst the icing is still ‘wet’. TIP: If you stick the Smarties on in advance the colour will drain from them a little, so I tend to make cakes in advance then ice on the day. TIP2: Give it a whirl with other chocolate options..Minstrels maybe!
