Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake

Submitted by Moroccan Mama

"From Nigella Lawson cookbook "Feast""

 

• Ready In: 1hr 5mins
• Ingredients: 14
• Serves: 10

ingredients

• for the cake

• 200 g plain flour
• 1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda
• 50 g cocoa
• 275 g sugar
• 175 g unsalted butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 80 ml sour cream
• 125 ml boiling water
• 175 g dark chocolate chips

• for the syrup

• 1 teaspoon cocoa
• 125 ml water
• 100 g sugar
• 25 g dark chocolate (from a thick chocolate bar)

directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F, putting in a baking sheet as you do, and line a loaf tin (21x11cm) with baking parchment.
2. Put the flour, baking soda, cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream into the food processor and blitz till a smooth, satiny brown batter. Scrape down with a spatula and process again while pouring the boiling water down the funnel. Switch it off, remove lid and blade, then stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Scrape and pour this beautiful batter into the prepared loaf tin and slide into the oven, cooking for about an hour. When it's ready, the loaf will be risen and split down the middle -- but your cake skewer may come out a bit sticky, as this is a very damp cake -- this is a good thing.
4. When the cake has had about 45 minutes of baking, put the syrup ingredients of cocoa, water, and sugar into a small saucepan and boil hard for 5 minutes or more, until it reduces into a dark, smokey, chocolatey syrup.
5. Take cake out of oven and set on cooling rack and still in it's pan, pierce here and there with a skewer. Then pour the syrup as evenly as possible, which is not very, over the surface of the cake. It will run to the sides of the pan, but some will absorb in the middle.
6. Once the cake is completely cold, remove from pan and remove the parchment. Sit on oblong plate. Now take bar of chocolate and cut with a very sharp knife so that it splinters and flakes and falls in slices of varying thickness and thinness. Scatter these pieces all over the surface of the cake.

Reviews

[Flowerfairy]

This is a really good recipe. Very moist chocolate cake. However, I prefer to use chocolate with 49% cocoa in this cake. (I also tried this recipe with dark 70% chocolate once and found it too dark and dense that way.)

 

[Gumrat]

I chose this in preference to Nigella's Chocolate Loaf Cake as I can't get hold of Muscovado sugar or any dense brown sugar here in Switzerland and anyhow, the family doesn't do healthy! This cake is delicious - maybe too sweet for my taste, I might change the sugar/butter/flour proportions next time. The syrup and chocolate shavings really make a difference.

 

[Stacey-Jane]

this was so tasty and it stayed moist for days. Very easy to do in the blender