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Or chocolate for the non Irish speakers amongst you, sometimes you just need a chocolate fix don’t you and Thursday was one of those days, after the chaos of the previous couple of days — floor fitting, new patio doors, work; oh yes I needed chocolate and it had to be chocolate cake.

So I set off looking through my cookbooks, new or previously unused ones in particular, I wanted a new challenge not a cake I knew well and had made several times before (not that I’m saying returning to an old favourite is a bad thing, don’t get me wrong sometimes it’s the only way to go). In the end I went for a hybrid recipe and an adapted one at that – Ultimate Chocolate Cake from Avoca Tea Time (Hugo Arnold) topped with Dorie Greenspan’s Caramel Nut Topping from Baking: From My Home to Yours. The caramel topping was inspired by the lovely Nickki’s ‘Tuesdays With Dorie’ entry on The Claytons Blog.

The chocolate cake was, I have to admit, one of the best I’ve tasted in a long while — deeply chocolatey and so dense and moist giving a brownie like softness, that gave the ultimate in mouth-feel and tastebud satisfaction too. Despite the richness of the cake non of us could resist going back for another slice.  Definitely a cake to make you smile, just look even the cake was smiling when it came out of the oven  

Coffee is added to this cake, both for moisture and flavour and as we’re not (well no I’ll rephrase that my Mum and Dad aren’t) such great lovers of coffee flavoured cakes I replaced ’standard’ strong coffee with ‘Toffee Cappuccino’ flavoured coffee from Boaters. I chose the toffee flavour to mirror and enhance the caramel topping although I wasn’t sure if the coffee would be strongly flavoured enough to battle past the chocolate but it did giving rich caramel undertones which both warmed and complimented the topping no end.

The Avoca recipe specified adding buttermilk to the cake mixture but I didn’t have any in and it’s such a hassle to find it locally that I couldn’t be bothered traipsing around for half a day before setting to work on baking this cake. So what to do? Well, I used creme fraiche, having only just made a big jar of it, not using it would seem wrong, very wrong indeed.

You just wouldn’t believe how easy creme fraiche is to make. There seems to be several ways to go about it but all I did was combine 600ml of double cream with three tablespoons of creme fraiche (a bought tub) in a sterilised le parfait jar and left it to stand at room temperature for 24 hours, stirring every two/three hours, by the following day you have wonderful, thick creme fraiche which is ready to be put in the refrigerator or used. The jar of creme fraiche will keep for up to two weeks in the fridge and to make more you simply take three tablespoons of the creme fraiche out of the batch and combine with more cream, and so the cycle continues. Short of having your own herd of dairy cows and using your own milk from them I don’t think you can get more self sufficient.  The cream I use comes from Riverford by the way and is certified organic.

Creme fraiche and buttermilk serve the same purpose in cake baking; they allow you to cut back on the butter content a little and provide moistness, leading to slightly damp, sticky cakes — exactly like this one.

For the topping I opted out of using peanuts as Dorie suggests and used cashews instead, I love cashew nuts and their slight saltiness I thought would offset the caramel, and it did perfectly. The caramel was a delight, very delicate in flavour, almost butterscotch like and reminiscent of Werthers Original sweets. As the recipe simply specified two cups of sugar (taken to probably mean granulated sugar) I decided to vary that slightly, going for half golden granulated sugar and half demerara sugar, which probably lent more to the final colour of the caramel than the flavour. Also instead of using the double cream specified I used creme fraiche, this would have impacted on the butterscotch nature of the caramel too, giving that slight edge to the flavour.

I’d be happy to serve this cake either for afternoon tea or as an after dinner dessert — it’s certainly classy enough to stand up to dinner party fare too. The announcement of the cake, especially with some thick double cream, is enough to whet the appetite even after a feast of a meal.

The Recipe:

• 275g unsalted butter
• 125ml strong coffee
• 275g dark chocolate
• 220g plain flour
• 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 225g light brown sugar
• 225g golden caster sugar
• 30g cocoa
• 100ml creme fraiche
• 4 medium size eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 150c or the equivalent and line a 20cm spring-form cake tin.
2. Melt the butter, chocolate and coffee together in a large bowl over a pan of simmering water, remove from the heat.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the bowl of chocolate and combine gently before adding in the eggs and creme fraiche.
4. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 1 1/2 – 2 hours or until firm and but a skewer still has a trace of cake mix on.
5. Leave to cool in the tin on a cooling rack.
6. Once cool prepare the caramel topping and pour over the cake, allow to cool before serving. 

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Filed under Cakes & Cookies, Desserts, My Recipes, Produce, Sides, Vegetarian