Chocolate fudge cake

Chocolate fudge cake
Makes one 18cm square or 20cm round cake

Ingredients

100g wholemeal flour

70g white flour

10g (2 tsp) baking powder

5g (1 tsp) bicarbonate of soda
25g cocoa powder
125g sugar
pinch of salt
75g softened butter or spread
150ml milk (dairy or otherwise)
2 eggs
1 tbsp molasses or treacle

Icing:
25g butter or spread
1 dessertspoon cocoa powder
1 dessertspoon milk
125g icing sugar, sifted

Method:

Grease and line an 18cm square (or 20cm round) cake tin. Place all the dry ingredients into a bowl, sifting the cocoa powder if you wish, then add the spread, milk, eggs and molasses. Beat for 2-3 minutes or until smooth. Pour into the prepared tin and bake at 150C for 45-50 minutes. Cool for five to ten minutes in the tin, then turn out carefully and cool on a wire rack.

To make the icing, place all the ingredients in a bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Stir and then beat until smooth and glossy. Remove from the heat and leave until it starts to cool and thicken. Spread over the cake.

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Notes: While the original recipe called for butter and cow's milk, I make this with dairy-free spread (in both the cake and the icing) and dairy-free milk. There does not seem to be any difference in texture or taste. I have not tried making this vegan. 

The original recipe used 175g self-raising flour, with 5g baking powder. Since I can't easily get self-raising flour, I increased the amount of baking powder, and substituted 100g of the flour for wholemeal flour to make it more nutritious. But you could use all white flour, or indeed all wholemeal if you don't mind it being slightly heavier. 

I usually cut the cake in half horizontally when it’s cooled (before icing), and put jam or lemon curd in the middle. To make it extra rich you could make even more of the icing and put some of that in the middle too, but we prefer a contrasting taste. Home-made apricot or strawberry jam is particularly good. 

The fudge icing makes enough to cover the top of the cake, but not the sides, so double the quantity if you want it to cover the side too - although it's a bit difficult to get it to stick, as it's inclined to puddle at the base. I prefer to use something like chocolate finger biscuits, broken in half, around the sides, held in place by a little melted chocolate.

This cake cuts into twelve reasonable sized portions, or eight rather larger ones. If you have leftovers, keep them in the fridge.