Chocolate Espresso Cake With Caffe Latte Cream

This is the perfect after-dinner cake. The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's 'Feast'.

• Ready In: 1 hr
• Serves: 10-12
• Yields: 1 cake

Ingredients

• 150  g dark chocolate
• 150  g butter
• 6  eggs
• 250  g caster sugar
• 1  teaspoon vanilla extract
• 75  g plain flour
• 5  teaspoons instant espresso powder
• 4  tablespoons  Tia Maria or 4  tablespoons  other  coffee liqueur
• 75  g white chocolate
• 375  ml  double cream
• 2  teaspoons instant espresso powder
•  cocoa powder (for decoration)

Directions

1. Take everything you need out of the fridge to bring to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 180°C
2. Butter and line a 23cm springform tin with baking parchment.
3. Melt the dark chocolate and butter and set aside to cool slightly.
4. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla together until thick, pale and fluffy – about 7 minutes. They should have at least doubled in volume, even tripled.
5. Gently fold the flour and espresso powder, taking care not to lose the air you have created, and finally add the melted chocolate and butter, folding gently again.
6. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 35-40 minutes, by which time the top of the cake should be firm, and the underneath a bit gooey.
7. Let the cake to cool completely on a wire rack before releasing from the tin.
8. For the cream, melt the white chocolate, and let it cool. Fold in the cream and espresso powder, whipping the latte cream together to thicken it a little.
9. Sit the sprung cake on a plate, fill the middle sunken crater with the latte cream and dust with a little cocoa powder.