Autumn Chocolate Cake

Have I said how much I love Autumn yet? This week was cold enough to wear my knitted roll neck jumper. (yay)

So, as this week has been the first proper week of Autumnal weather in London I decided to be brave and attempt to make a cake. I'm not brilliant at making cakes. I think it has something to do with being the polar opposite of precise. I just don't have the patience to be exact when baking and it is so often why my cakes fail. When baking a cake, you need precision, discipline and a good oven. I don't have any of those. 

This is why it is perfect for me, its based on a recipe by a lady called Jestei on Food52 (one of my favourite websites). I changed it quite a lot from Jestei's recipe, adding Earl Grey and Vanilla as flavours. I also made the icing with melted chocolate, icing sugar and olive oil. Chocolate and olive oil really work well together, so please don't knock it until you've tried it. Its one of my favourite flavour combinations, along with chocolate and earl grey. 

The baking tin I used was a fancy one I found while out shopping (in Aldi). I was completely over excited when they were selling them off in the bargain isle and brought several different ones. I was originally going to make a sweat bread in it after watching the Bake off final last week, but thought it might make a cake look a little less ordinary, so if you don't have to have a fancy tin to hand, a normal one will suffice. 

My song of the week, is really a song for every week, but its a good baking soundtrack....Flawless

Ingredients

6 Large eggs, separated

190 g Cocoa powder

200g Sugar

180g Butter

200g Good quality dark chocolate (use dark chocolate in cooking as it give it a stronger chocolate taste)

1 tsp Sea salt

1tsp Earl grey tea leaves or 1 bag (optional)

1 tsp Vanilla essence

For the icing

200g Icing sugar

50g chocolate

1 table soon of good quality olive oil

Melt the chocolate and butter in a pan on a low heat. Once melted together, leave to one side to cool. Whisk the egg whites in a clean large bowl, you can do this with a hand mixer to save time, whisk until firm peaks are formed. 

Transfer the chocolate mixture into large bowl and add the egg yolks, add the sugar and the vanilla essence. Boil the kettle and brew the tea in a cup of half full water, if using leaves you will have to strain before adding to the mixture, set aside for a few moments to cool otherwise you will cook the egg yolks. 

Add the cocoa powder to the chocolate mixture and the sea salt. Once the tea has cooled slightly add to the chocolate mixture. Fold in the egg whites with a metal spoon. At this point the mixture should be batter like, if it needs to be firmer add more cocoa power or if you like you can add a table spoon or two of flour. 

Pour into a greased baking tin and cook on a medium heat for around 30 minutes. The top of the cake should be crisp, timing is key with this as you still want it soft in the middle, but cooked enough so its not raw. Over cooking this would be a massive mistake, you need to look for something not to dissimilar from a brownie. 

Once its out of the oven, leave to cool completely on a wire rack. This is when you can make the topping.

Melt together the olive oil and the chocolate, mix in the icing sugar. Once the cake is cook completely pour over the top and let it dip down the sides. I chose to add a dusting of icing sugar on the top. 

Enjoy and please let me know if you do try any of my recipes, I love hearing from you guys!