In which I make a ridonculously chocolaty cake from a possibly recognisable children's book...
I'm sure many of you will have read/seen Matilda by Roald Dahl. There is a famous scene in which Bruce Bogtrotter having stolen some of the Trunchbull's personal cake is forced to eat an entire chocolate cake.
Luckily Gary Rhodes (you know that TV chef you haven't seen in a while) wrote a recipe book called Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes which tells you how to bake a slightly smaller version of the cake.*
*The cake in the book is "fully eighteen inches in diameter". The original recipe makes a 9" cake so I doubled the ingredients and made it twice as high!
Ingredients
- 450g plain dark chocolate
- 350g butter
- 450g caster sugar
- 120g self raising flour
- 12 eggs (separated)
Icing
- 450g plain dark chocolate
- 450ml double cream
Recipe
- Melt the chocolate and butter together.
- Allow to cool (so it doesn't cook the eggs).
- Mix in sugar, flour and egg yolks.
- Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks are formed.
- Fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture.
- Fold in the other half until just combined.
- Grease two 9-inch (21 cm) cake tins.
- Bake at 150°C for 35-45 minutes (keep checking with a knife and don't burn it!)
- Leave to cool on a rack while you make the icing.
- To make the icing simply melt the chocolate into the cream over a low heat.
- Leave the icing to cool (~2 hours unless you speed it up in a fridge)
- Ice the cake (you should have around half an inch of coverage all over)
- Serve
Tom Out!
P.S. Pudding party pics to follow!