Exploding Bakery Chocolate Fudge Cake Recipe
Here's a cake with a nostalgic nod to the 1970s, but we've dressed it up for your modern tastebuds. It's the type of fudge cake that showed up at all those birthday parties, school fetes, or was served in restaurants alongside Mateus Rosé.
We’ve swapped the margarine for rapeseed oil and it's gluten-free by accident, rather than design. The cocoa paste brings proper chocolate depth, the eggs have been whipped into action to give a moussey lift and the icing sits halfway between a ganache and childhood birthday cake frosting. It’s all the comfort of the past, but made with the sort of ingredients your adult self can feel smug about, until you get shamefully caught, spoon in hand, eating it straight from the fridge.
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Chocolate Fudge Cake Recipe:
100g Cocoa Powder
200g Boiling Water
5g Cornflour
280g Rapeseed Oil
6 Medium Eggs
370g Caster Sugar
280g Ground Almonds
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
For the icing:
150g Full Fat Cream Cheese
100g Icing Sugar
125g Dark Chocolate
For the topping:
20g Chopped Pistachios
Preheat your oven to 170°C fan/340°F/Gas 5 and line a 25cm (10 inch) springform tin with greaseproof paper. We find it easiest to scrunch-up paper into a ball then unravel it and press into the tin.
Pour the boiling water into a bowl with the cocoa powder and cornflour and whisk together until it forms a paste. Then set aside to cool slightly.
Using a stand mixer or an electric whisk, mix the oil, sugar and eggs on a high speed until you get a frothy mixture that has increased in volume. This will take about 5 minutes.
Next add the cocoa powder paste to the mixing bowl and mix until it's fully incorporated. Now add the ground almonds, bicarbonate of soda and salt and bring it all together until it becomes a glossy, runny batter. Pour into your lined baking tin and bake for about 1 hour.
As the cake is cooling, make the icing by mixing together the icing sugar and cream cheese until there are no lumps. Melt your chocolate either in the microwave or on a bain-marie until the chocolate is fully melted, then add to the cream cheese and icing sugar mixture and fully combine, with a scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a spatula to ensure there's no unmixed cream cheese lurking down there.
Remove the cake from its tin to begin icing, it doesn't matter if the cake is still a bit hot. The icing should be spreadable, and if not, give a short blast in the microwave. Spread the icing all over the top of the cake with a spatula and top with a sprinkling of chopped pistachios to create some contrasting colour and crunch.
To serve, slice the cake with a sharp knife that's been warmed in hot water. Eat on its own or with a big spoonful of crème fraîche. On the darkest of winter days a little zap in the microwave will warm the sponge and your soul.
