Project Chocolate Cake - The Cakes are Baked (PM)

Well, for me, Sunday was baking day. And I gotta tell ya, things did not go exactly to plan for me either.

Firstly, I'm flipping sick. A motherflipping cold. I can't really taste anything properly.

Secondly, because I only have one 20cm-cake tin and because I also didn't want to have too much cake I decided to halve Nigella's recipe, which, like D.Lebs also called for two cakes to be baked and then sandwiched together with an icing. I even thought to myself as I was measuring up, "Well I guess I will inevitably forget to halve something." And, as it was inevitable, I did. I halved everything except the eggs. Is that so bad? I don't know but I do know my cake didn't rise at all. Then again, neither did K's D.Leb cake, so maybe it was just some par for this weird course. Oh sure the cake got a giant dome, like all cakes (how the eff do you make an even topped cake?!?!?), but the edges, pah like pancakes. Has this got anything to do with the egg double up? Who knows.

Oh, sure I could have made the cake again, you know for science, but I've seen what happens to bloggers that cook and test and cook and test recipes.

Not an actual blogger

But, my own personal fuck-up notwithstanding this is definitely a cake with potential. Chucking a bunch of ingredients in a mixer and mixing them before chucking it in a tin and baking, my kind of cake.

As discussed, Nigella's recipe did not have enough cocoa. I tried her recommended dose but tasting the mix I decided it really needed a double up. So I doubled up.


So Nigella wants you to make two cakes, sandwich them together with icing, and ice, top and sides, with icing. Me, I'm not much of an icing gal. Its too sweet for my tastes so I was gonna kybosh the sandwiching, but after coming up with the flatty cake I decided the sandwich would add some height and substance.

The icing is a mixture of sour cream, butter, chocolate, golden syrup and icing sugar. I used a third of the sugar Nigella suggested, you know for thickness, it was pretty sweet, but also, it was pretty damn delicious.

So let's get down to brass tacks. The cake is moist and chocolatey and basically exactly like a chocolate cake. It's yum. But like the Lebovitz cake, the real chocolate hit comes from the icing, and that is not how I want my cake. Plus with the icing, it really was way to fucking sweet. What I know though is that I have learned some lessons. I'd like to try this cake again, maybe up the rising agents slightly, leave off the icing. Or modify it. 

I know that this is a chocolate cake I could meet again. Is it the one? I don't think so. Plus with this cold so the whole affair has been less scientific than I would have liked, because my taste buds and appetite are all askew. But science isn't made in a day.