Chocolate cake

I wasn't going to blog this - on the one hand, it's just another chocolate cake, and I did no more than increase the quantities from Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake which features in the chocolate section of Feast, but it worked wonderfully. And there's always room in your life for another chocolate cake, especially easy and lush ones like this.

Hot on the heels of Blue's birthday, the Husband actually turned 40 (as opposed to officially turning 40 in September when we had his party) at the weekend. I made this mindful (as was when I made the Victoria Sponge for Blue) that sometimes, sponge cakes can seem a little on the thin side (may be it's just me) so I increased all the ingredients for the cake (but not the icing) by half, and I was not disappointed. It made a fabulous, generous chocolate cake, which even Pink, who isn't a lover of chocolate cakes, went mad for.

And it went down very well with a glass of champagne before we went out on Saturday night...

For the cake, you will need

2 20cm loose bottomed cake tins, greased and lined
300g plain flour
300g caster sugar
11/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g cocoa
260g unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
225 ml sour cream

For the icing
75g unsalted butter
175g dark chocolate broken into small pieces
300g sifted icing sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
125ml sour cream 

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Put all the cake ingredients into a food processor and process to a thick, smooth batter.

Divide between the tins and bake for 25-35 minutes till a skewer comes out clean. if you remember, swap the tins round in the oven half way through.

Cool the cakes in their tins for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack.

When the cakes are cold, make the icing. Melt together the butter & chocolate in quite a large bowl (large enough to take the rest of the ingredients and mix the icing up) and set aside to cool a little, then stir in the golden syrup, followed by the sour cream, then stir in the seived icing sugar. to make a reasonably thick spreadable icing. If you need to thin it out, use a tiny bit of boiling water.

Smear the icing over one of the halves of cake, then sandwich the second half on top, then slap and smear the rest of the icing over the outside of the cake.