I'm still on holiday from work (starting back next Monday) but my boyfriend is already back. I wanted to take some time this week to stock the freezer with some meals for when we are both back to the the daily routine of adulthood. To that end I intended to make a pie today and portion it before freezing to make 3 nights of meals. I made the pie filling (recipe to come later) but that is as far as I got because due to my other exertions today, I ran out of butter so couldn't make the dough. It was also so hot today, and so hot in the kitchen, that I couldn't face more time in front of the oven. That will be a task for tomorrow.
The reason I ran out of butter? Nigella Lawson's Devil's Food Cake from Kitchen. I think Kitchen is my favourite book of hers. It was sort of gifted to me by a friend at the end of second year law as a thank you (and I say sort of, because she actually gave me How to be a Domestic Goddess, which I already had but she suspected I might and gave me an exchange card with which I gratefully got Kitchen) and is probably the cookbook I use the most.
Devil's Food Cake
adapted from Nigella Lawson's recipe in Kitchen
For the cake you will need:
- 50g cocoa powder
- 100g dark cane sugar (Nigella says dark muscovado sugar - this was the closest I could get)
- 1 cup boiling water
- 125g soft butter
- 225g high grade flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp vanilla essence
- 2 size 8 eggs
For the icing you will need:
- 1/2 cup water
- 30g dark cane sugar
- 125g butter
- 300g dark chocolate buttons
- 100g icing sugar (optional)
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.
- Mix the cocoa powder and 100g dark cane sugar in a bowl. Pour in boiling water, mix and set aside.
- Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl (everything will eventually end up in this bowl).
- In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and baking powder.
- Add the vanilla essence to the creamed butter and sugar and mix lightly.
- Crack one egg into the bowl with the butter and mix, before adding some flour and mixing then cracking the second egg into the bowl.
- Mix in the remaining flour.
- Fold the cocoa/sugar/water mixture into the butter and flour.
- Distribute the mixture evenly between two sandwich cake tins. The type I have can't be lined with baking paper so I greased them with cooking oil first, but if you are using ordinary tins then do line with baking paper.
- Nigella's recipe says to bake for 30 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clear. I checked at 20 minutes and the cakes were already getting toward well done so any longer would have been a disaster for me.
- While the cakes are baking, put the water, cane sugar and butter in a small pot on low heat, stirring occasionally.
- When butter is melted, take the pot off the heat, add the chocolate buttons and stir until all the chocolate is melted and the icing is smooth.
- When the cakes have cooled enough for icing, mix the icing sugar into the cooled icing. Spread icing over the top of one cake (not quite to the edge as the compression from the top cake will spread the icing out), place the other cake on top and spread icing over the top of that cake too.
I added in the icing sugar because, although Nigella said the icing was meant to be runny and never quite set, it was really too thin for my liking and I couldn't see how I could use it to ice the cakes (particularly as a filling) without it all flowing away. I also wanted it to set because my boyfriend wouldn't be able to take any to work with him if the icing was sticking to everything. This might be because I used less butter than she suggested due to running out. However, I really liked the result after adding the icing sugar. The icing was still runny so that it flowed down the sides of the cake giving me a nice effect, but once I refrigerated it, it set and became fudgey.
The cake itself was rich but not overpoweringly so. It didn't rise as much as I expected it to, making it quite dense.
