Cake

I love making cakes. All sorts. But my favourite is a

Poppy's birthday cake
Originally uploaded by hausfrau in melbourne

Chocolate Fudge cake.

I have used this on so many occasions. This is always the one I use for birthday cakes, as it is dense and rich, and perfect for decorating.
The source of the recipe is long forgotton, I have been using it for at least ten years, and my copy of the recipe is dog-eared and about as cake splattered as you can get.

The cake in the picture used three cakes: 10cm, 13cm and 15cm. One quantity of the recipe.

The outside of the cakes were covered with tinted plastic icing (pettinice), then stacked one on top of the other. The flowers and bugs I made by hand using Flower Moulding paste. All very straight forward, just a bit time consuming.

CHOCOLATE FUDGE CAKE

60g dark chocolate

350g unsalted butter

60g dutch cocoa

60ml boiling water

400g sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp salt

200g plain flour

Preheat oven to 180C.

Butter and flour tins, then line bases.

Melt together butter and chocolate (I do this in the microwave, but you do need to keep checking and stirring every 30 seconds).

Stir cocoa and boiling water together in a cake mixer. Pour chocolate butter over and combine. Add eggs, one at a time. Add salt and flour, then beat on high speed for a minute.

Fill tins roughly 2.5cm high with batter and bake. The best way to check for doneness is when you see a crack appear on the top of the cake, and the cake barely wobbles. Keep a close eye on them, as they will require different cooking times. Rough estimates for cooking times are between 20 to 30 minutes (sorry, this is about as accurate as I can be, they seem to vary every time I make them). Allow to cool in the tin, levelling with your fingers if needed.

Loosen the sides with a spatula, then carefully invert on to a cooling rack and allow to cool overnight before decorating.

This is also good sandwiched together with a chocolate ganache, then smothered with the ganache all over. I'll dig out my ganache recipe soon and put it up.

Enjoy, but be warned. I suspect it might be fattening.