Chocolate cake alert!
For the cake:
6 oz butter, softened
6 oz golden caster sugar
8 oz self-raising flour
2 free range eggs
1 ½ tsp good quality cocoa powder
1 ½ tsp boiling water
For the chocolate cream icing:
300 ml double cream
1 ½ heaped tsp cocoa powder
100 g icing sugar, sifted
Preheat the oven to 180 C and grease out your cake tin.
Pop the butter into a glass bowl to soften slightly.
Add the caster sugar and cream until pale and fluffy.
Add the eggs one by one and beat with an electric whisk (on a fairly slow setting).
Sift in the flour and fold into the mixture.
Transfer half the mixture to a separate bowl.
In a small bowl or a large mug or jug, mix the cocoa powder with boiling water.
Allow to cool a little before stirring into one of the bowls (if the chocolate mix is absolutely piping hot then the eggs in the cake mix may start to scramble before your eyes! Not good!).
Arrange spoonfuls of the different cake mixes alternately in your prepared cake tin(s)…
(Making a bunny shape out of cake mix is completely optional)
And bake in the oven for 30 minutes (if you’ve used spread the mix over two cake tins) or 45 – 55 minutes if you’ve used one big cake tin.
While it’s cooling on a wire rack, it’s time to make the chocolate cream icing.
Pour the double cream into a glass bowl and whisk it with the sifted icing sugar and cocoa powder until it’s firm and can form pleasing chocolate-cream peaks.
Then spread it on to your cake: on top of one half, and then on top, smoothing it with a palette knife.
And decorate as you like! I used giant chocolate buttons, glacé cherries…
A whisper of icing sugar…
…And a little dark chocolate, melted and lovingly drizzled all over…
Pop it into the fridge so the chocolate sets and it’s firm and crisp and enjoy!
Chocolate buttons and cherries cheer,
atop a fluffy cream.
Like a hundred limed artichoke feathers, sweet and
round proud flat circles.
a-crisp
prop up shadows
cast
too fast for puppets to keep up.
We need to set them on a stave
to stave off confusion.
Stay stave!
