Dark chocolate berry cake

[Dan Lepard]

Dark chocolate berry cake



By mixing a bold berry preserve into a simple icing, this dark chocolate cake gets a complex and impressive finish.

100g unsalted butter, cold is fine
200g dark chocolate*
50g golden syrup
50ml natural yoghurt
175g light soft brown sugar
3 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs
250g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
50g cocoa
a jar of berry preserve, like blackcurrant or raspberry
150g icing sugar

Cover the base and sides of a 20cm round cake tin with non-stick baking paper or foil, and heat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/350°F/gas 4. Melt the butter, 125g chocolate and golden syrup gently. Remove from the heat, beat in turn the yoghurt, sugar, vanilla and eggs until smooth. Measure the flours, baking powder and cocoa into another bowl, and toss to combine. Then sift this into the chocolate butter mixture and whisk until smooth. Pour into the tin and bake for 50 minutes. To ice, melt 75g chocolate and beat in 75g preserve. Add the icing sugar and beat with enough water to make a thick creamy icing. Spit the cake, fill generously with more preserve then reassemble and spread the icing over the top.

*edit, 5th June

[Zeb]

We had a go at this one, and it looked a lot like this pic. The cake was tall and quite solid, we sandwiched it together with strained and whizzed Bonne Maman cherry compote and used some of the cherry in the icing mix and served it with a bowl of lightly whipped cream on the side. Lovely way of making a chocolate icing, absolutely delicious.

The top split a lot, which doesn't matter of course when you are icing a cake, but I think if I make it again I would maybe try it in one of those bundt tins with a hole in the middle and cook it for a little less time, possibly my tin which measures 19 cms was that bit too narrow and the cake didn't have enough space? Anyway, three quarters gone by end of tea time! A cake to get your teeth into! Still wish they used your pics in the Guardian though! I emailed them once about it, didn't get a reply. I am enjoying all these chocolately delights, in fact I can't resist them

PS. There's a reference to soda in the online version, but I ignored that as it wasn't in the print version.

Here it is waiting to be cut

Tea and Dan Lepard cherry chocolate cake

[Dan Lepard]

PS. There's a reference to soda in the online version, but I ignored that as it wasn't in the print version.

have removed it from the recipe abolve.

[Sue-L]

The top split a lot, which doesn't matter of course when you are icing a cake........

The top of mine split around the edges quite a lot too, Zeb. As you say, the frosting filled up the cracks.

Mixed feelings about this one. My son (who wouldn't normally eat jam or berries if his life depended on it) really liked it, but the cake was a little too dry for my taste. I'm sure a bowl of Zeb's cream would have improved things a lot!

http://mainlybaking.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... -cake.html

[Annalisa Barbieri]

That's weird, I posted a reply yesterday but maybe I forgot to press 'send'.

I made this on Monday. Really liked it and as the PP says, even for someone who isn't keen on jam in cakes (i.e. me) I thought it was delicious. But I also found it dry. I cooked it for only 40 mins but thought it could have actually done with just 30. My oven runs hot though so I should have followed my instinct.

Anyway, dry or not it all went within a day!

ps: mine also split a lot but rose beautifully with no collapse.

[Claire]

hi all

I'm hoping to bake this cake this weekend as it looks delicious, however The Guardian version says 200g of dark chocolate and this one says 125g - which is quite a big difference. Can anybody confirm how much chocolate it should be?

Thanks

[Dan Lepard]

Ahh, thanks for pointing that out, will correct it above. It's 125g for the cake and 75g for the icing, the Guardian added the two together in the ingredients, which I should have done.
Dan

[Annalisa Barbieri]

I made this again today, cooking it for 30 mins and it rose really well again but wasn't really cooked in the middle (last week 40 mins at 180 was too much for my cakey). This still made for an excellent cake but very different, more like a brownie cake. I think the answer for me with my oven is 160 for 40 mins.

Because I'm not overly keen on sugar icings, I made the icing this time with melted chocolate and some double cream (melting both together very gently then whisking it until thick). It wasn't as handsome as last week's cake but it was delicious and very moorish, which is of course a bad thing!

I think this cake is fast becoming a favourite chocolate cake for us. I love how easy it is to make and I think with a little tweaking for our super hot oven it will get there.

[Dan Lepard]

Annalisa, it's lovely to read that.

The dryness is actually down to the chocolate (cocoa butter), rather than the cocoa. Less chocolate will make the cake softer and more moist, but then it loses the intensity.
Dan

[Ellery22]

I made this for a colleague's leaving do on Tuesday. It was hugely successful and voted nicer than the bought cake from Tesco (I don't think they were just saying that to be nice, either!). I made mine with good-quality strawberry jam, which seemed very popular. Three people asked for the recipe.

I hope it encourages you, Dan, to think of all these Guardian readers across the country pouncing on the baking column, then scurrying off to try the recipes and feeding them to grateful friends and families on Sunday and Monday!