First rate Chocolate cake
by Mary Berry

This is a fabulous chocolate taken from Mary Berry’s Fast cakes book, it’s so delicious I had to share the recipe with you 🙂

Ingredients:

Cake :

• 1 rounded tbsp. cocoa
• 2 tbsps. hot water
• 100g butter or marg
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g S.R flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1 level tsp baking powder

Topping:

• 40g butter
• 25g cocoa
• 3 tbsp. milk
• 100g icing sugar

Method:

Heat the oven to 180° / 160 Fan / Gas 4 and grease and line an 8″ (20cm) round baking tin or use a cake liner.

Blend the cocoa with the hot water and leave to cool. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and beat for a few minutes.

Turn into the tin and bake for 35 – 40 minutes. When cooked the cake will have shrunk back slightly from the sides and the cake will spring back when lightly pressed with a finger.

Turn out, remove the paper and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Now to make the icing: Melt the butter in a small saucepan and stir in the cocoa and cook gently over a low heat for one minute.

Remove from heat and add the milk and icing sugar. Beat well to mix and then leave to cool stirring occasionally until the icing has thickened to a spreading consistency.

Spread over the top of the cake and leave to set. Add decoration (optional) by melting a couple a squares of white chocolate and pour in a spiral on top of the cake. Then with a cocktail stick, drag it from the inside to the outer edge creating a cobweb effect.

Delicious with fresh cream poured over ….. yummy

My top tip : ~ when you remove the cake from the tin, turn the sponge over so that its nice and flat to put the topping on 🙂