Chocolate mud cake for my 3rd blog birthday

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Chocolate mud cake with chocolate glaze

It’s the third birthday of my wee blog, and I’ve decided that it’s time I moved it to a new home. So – welcome! Please update all links, bookmarks and RSS feeds, and if you see something looking a bit strange, please let me know!

I must say a big thanks to Alastair for helping me sort out hosting, wordpress installation, and being a sounding board for my stupid tech questions. Plus he didn’t threaten me with divorce when I threw tantrums over issues relating to HTML, importing posts, and image editing, when he would have been within his rights to! And thanks to you as well, for being here and reading and commenting. Yay! (Can you feel the love? Awww. Hugs all around!)

Chocolate mud cake with chocolate glaze

And since it’s not a birthday without cake, here’s a chocolate mud cake for the occasion. I actually made this cake for a work friend’s birthday (hello Ms Carina! xx) and here it is doing double duty as my blog birthday cake.

It’s a very dense, rich, chocolate cake and needs to be served warm or at room temperature. I’m never sure when I should keep cakes in the fridge, though I tend to leave them out of the fridge for a couple of days and then pop them in if there are still pieces remaining. I found the chocolate cake rather hard when it was cold out of the fridge, but a quick zap in the microwave fixed it up, as well as slightly melting the chocolate glaze on top. Mhmm gooey.

Chocolate mud cake with chocolate glaze

Since there’s not much to the cake – it contains rather a lot of chocolate, butter, 5 eggs and a small amount of flour, sugar and baking powder – the quality of the chocolate is very important. I used a dark chocolate – 75% cocoa – which I found gave an almost coffee flavour to the cake. While it’s a delicious cake, it doesn’t quite edge out this chocolate and beetroot cake as my favourite chocolate cake recipe.

Chocolate mud cake with chocolate glaze

Muddy chocolate cake

From Donna Hay Modern Classics 2

Serves 8-10

300g dark couverture chocolate, chopped
250g butter
5 eggs, separated
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat the oven to 130C and line a 20cm round cake tin with non-stick baking paper.

Place the chocolate and butter into a saucepan over low heat. Stir until the mixture is melted and smooth.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla until thick and pale.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Fold the chocolate mixture through the egg yolk mixture. Sift the flour and baking powder over it, and gently fold it through.

Add a third of the egg whites to the chocolate mixture and gently fold through. Add the remainder of the egg yolks and gently fold it through.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the cake is firm. Allow the cake to cool in the tin and spread chocolate glaze over the cooled cake.

Chocolate glaze

150g chopped dark couverture chocolate
1/2 cup single or pouring cream

Place the chocolate and cream into a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until melted and smooth. Let it stand for about 10 minutes to thicken slightly before pouring over a well chilled cake. Tap to remove any air bubbles.