Strength is the Capacity to Break a Chocolate Bar Into Four Pieces

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of the pieces.

(Judith Viorst)

Nigella Lawson’s now somewhat famous Quadruple Chocolate Cake is one of my all time favourites, both for the baking and the eating of it. Baking wise, it couldn’t be simpler as a food processor does all the work and as for the eating, well it is divine, but, was there room for improvement? That was my challenge.

Quadruple Chocolate? Chocolate chunks? Cocoa? Chocolate syrup ? and Chocolate sweeties?

Note though that the cake contains few ingredients, and so the quality of each ingredient is paramount to the final product – think top quality cocoa (I like Valrhona), top notch chocolate and if possible unrefined sugar.

This cake has an amazing ability to have a light sponge texture but at the same time retain a somewhat fudgy nature because of its post bake drenching with thick cocoa syrup. Quite often I make double the quantity of the syrup, especially if I’m not using a loaf pan, trust me this cake can take it.

In an effort to make this sumptuous dark beauty even more special I swapped the recommended dark chocolate for Green & Blacks Maya Gold dark chocolate – traditionally, the Maya Indians in southern Belize flavoured their cocoa with spices and in this bar of chocolate Green & Black’s aim to recapture that by blending rich, dark chocolate with a subtle hint of orange that is perfectly balanced by the warmth of cinnamon, nutmeg and a hint of vanilla.

Did my experiment pay off? Well it did, kind of. Whilst the warming scents of orange and cinnamon permeated the kitchen as the cake cooked and lent an elegance to the finished flavour, it just wasn’t strong enough in cocoa depth. I’m putting this down to the fact that Maya Gold is only 55% cocoa solids and in view of this would recommend you up the quantity of the cocoa powder by around another 50g (reducing the flour appropriately) if you prefer a stronger, more bitter edged, flavour.

Needless to say, this is an extremely rich cake. A thin slice would be enough for even the most hardcore of chocoholics.

The cake has great keeping qualities due to its incredible moistness; that is to say it keeps well providing you have the will power to resist taking that small slice every you pass the cake stand. Seriously though, try bake it a day before you want to eat it (difficult, difficult, difficult,) but the reward is huge – ultra fudgy, rich cake.

Quadruple Chocolate Cake

For the cake (slightly adapted from the original recipe):

• 200g self raising flour
• 50g cocoa
• 275g caster sugar
• 175g butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 80ml sour cream
• 125ml boiling water
• 200g Maya Gold chocolate broken into small pieces

For the syrup:

• 1 teaspoon cocoa
• 125ml water
• 100g caster sugar
• 25g dark chocolate (I used Smarties)

1. Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and line a loaf tin (21 x 11cm and 7.5cm deep) or other tin of your choice. Put the flour, cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream into a food processor, and blitz until it’s a smooth, satiny brown batter. Process again while pouring the boiling water slowly into the mixture. Turn off the processor, and stir in the chocolate chips.(If you’re not using a food processor, cream the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs, followed by the dry ingredients, then the sour cream and vanilla, then beat in the water.)
2. Pour the fairly runny batter into the loaf tin, and bake for an hour. When ready, the loaf will be risen and split down the middle, and a skewer should come out fairly clean.
3. Just before the cake comes out of the oven, put the syrup ingredients of cocoa, water and sugar into a small saucepan, and boil for five minutes. What you want is a reduced liquid, a syrup.
4. When you’ve taken the cake out of the oven, pierce all over with a skewer, and pour the syrup as evenly as possible over the cake. Let the cake become completely cold, then slip it out of its tin, removing the paper, and place it on your serving plate. Get your chocolate, and slice thin slivers off the block with a heavy knife, until you’ve got enough to cover the top of the cake (or scatter with Smarties as I did). If required, spoon a little extra syrup so that the chocolate will stick to the surface.

All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt! Lucy Van Pelt

(in Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz)

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Tagged as: Cake, Chocolate, Feast: Food That Celebrates Life, Green & Blacks, Maya Gold, Nigella Lawson, Quadruple Chocolate Cake