Mary Berry’s heavenly chocolate cake with fudge icing
This recipe is from Mary Berry’s Traditional Puddings & Desserts.
Ingredients (makes 8 very generous slices!)
- 125g / 4oz butter
- 200g / 7oz dark chocolate, broken into pieces
- 2 tbsp water
- 3 eggs, separated
- 125g / 4oz caster sugar
- 90g / 3oz self-raising flour
- 60g / 2oz ground almonds
Fudge icing ingredients
- 60g / 2oz butter
- 30g / 1oz cocoa powder
- 3 tbsp milk (you may need a little more)
- 250g / 8oz icing sugar
- White chocolate shavings or anything else you like to use to decorate
Method
Note: one cake or two? Mary’s recipe calls for one 20cm / 8in cake tin and then you have to cut the single cake in half horizontally to make the sandwich. I’m terrible at doing this, so I just split the mixture between two 20 cm cake tins but, of course, this affects the baking time.
Grease and line your cake tin/tins. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees C / Gas Mark 4 / 350 degrees F.
Melt the chocolate together with the butter and water. You can do this is a heatproof bowl over a pan of hot water or you can use the microwave. Make sure the butter and chocolate have melted completely and the mixture is smooth (as in the picture below). Leave to cool.
Whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar together using an electric whisk or mixer until fluffy and very light in colour. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and stir in. Carefully fold in the flour and ground almonds.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff but not dry (I interpreted this as: formed peaks but there was still some liquid in the bowl). Fold into the chocolate sponge mixture, gently but thoroughly. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin/tins.
If you’ve done just one cake: bake for 50 minutes or until risen well and firm to the touch. If you do two tins, like me, you’ll only need to bake for around 35 minutes.
Leave the cake(s) to cool in the tin for a few minutes, turn out onto a wire rack, and peel off the lining paper. Cool completely.
Make the fudge icing. Melt the butter in a pan, add the cocoa powder, and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Stir in the milk and icing sugar. Beat until smooth. Leave to cool until thickened.
If, like me, you find the icing is a bit stiff, just add a little milk.
If you’ve made one cake, now cut it in half horizontally to get two layers. If you’ve used two cake tins, you’re ready to go! Sandwich the cakes together using half of the fudge icing. Use a spatula and/or knife to spread the rest of the icing over the cake. It’ll look something like this:
Now decorate as you wish! I used a paper template to create neat eights and alternated white chocolate shavings and gold sugar stars.
While very chocolately, this cake is a bit dry for my liking. In my opinion, it’s best served warm with some ice-cream – then it really is heavenly! In fact, I’ve been experimenting and, if you have a microwave, I recommend you heat your slice for 10 seconds before eating – it makes all the difference to the texture and re-softens the frosting beautifully.
If you’re looking for other chocolate cake recipes, you could try:
My Lamington cake – chocolate and coconut.
Claire Huston / Art and Soul
That looks fabulous!
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Thank you! It’s lasting well too. Still three big slices left. Although, by the end of this evening I think we’ll be down to one π
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Cute decorating job!
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Thank you! It still looked better in my head than on the cake, but I was pleased with how neat the sections were π
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It came out well! Did you free hand it or use some kind of cover for the stuff you didn’t want to sprinkle?
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When I drew and cut out the circles of greaseproof baking paper to line the bottom of the cake tin, I did one extra. Then I folded the circle into 8 and cut out one eighth. I then used this as a mask when I was sprinkling on the chocolate and stars. I had planned to take a picture of that but the white chocolate melted all over my fingers and picking up the camera was no longer an option! π
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Haha! I definitely feel your pain on that one!
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It looks so delicious! Your cakes make me wish I were present there physically for a bite.
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Thank you!
I wish I could share it all over the internet with you guys. First because it would make me happy to share. And secondly because I could bake more because at the moment I have to stop so I don’t get fat!!
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I could eat it all without a regret! π It’s always exciting to see what you’ll be baking next.
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I love Mary Berry. Cake looks amazing.
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Thank you!
I love her too. I have to make my way through everything in her book π
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Wow
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Thank you!
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Lol I meant to type “Wow! That looks delicious”, but I accidentally hit enter XD
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It is very nice. And there’s still some left! I’m planning to have a bit with ice cream later π
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Ahh you’re making me so jealous.. O.O
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Looks delicious! π
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It’s great when warmed up slightly because it makes the icing go all soft and lovely π
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This cake looks amazing and I really wish I wasn’t on a diet right now, haha.
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Thanks! I wish we had more people in the house so I could share the calories round a bit more π
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I can’t believe you chickened out of cutting the sponge in half….lol π
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It would have been a disaster! The best diagonal cut ever seen π I have problems slicing bread!
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Yum!
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It is very nice! π
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Those are my kind of slices! Who needs proper meals when you can have cake? x
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I say proper meals + cake! π
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What a beautiful cake and it looks yummy too!
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Thank you! It was very nice, particularly when warmed up and with some ice cream π
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Three words: I love Chocolate! π
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Me too! All my recipes would be chocolate based… by I try to have some variety in there π
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Happy to find your experience journalized. We love Mary Barry in our house and found a copy of this recipe in her book. I was really stumped that after following the directions precisely, both cake and frosting were a real disappointment. I questioned that I failed to let the chocolate mixture cool enough as that was the only step I was uncertain. The cake was dense and dry. We removed it well before the timing of the recipe. The fudge frosting was also so thick it would not spread. Admittedly, this was my first ever chocolate cake from scratch, but I expected better. We are not wasting it, but find it absolutely necessary to have the cake warm with milk and vanilla ice cream. I can best describe it as a dry brownie.
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I entirely agree about it being best with ice cream. I was also a little disappointed by how dry it was! But at least, as you say, it didn’t go to waste (chocolate cake would never go to waste in our house) π
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