The Efx3 Recipe Collection

I make this sauce to spread over my chocolate cake. It sets on the cake so it stays in place, and if you microwave a slice of cake with the sauce on, it melts and gets nice and gooey
Ingredients:

200g bar of milk chocolate
100g bar of dark chocolate (adjust the ratios if you really like dark chocolate!)
1 tbsp honey
100ml pouring cream (single or double works)
1 tbsp butter (doesn’t have to be exact)

Preparation time: a few minutes to break up the chocolate
Cooking time: about 15-20 minutes

Method:

1) Break the chocolate into squares

2) Heat about an inch of water in a small pan – keep it hot enough to steam but don’t let it boil. Rest a glass pyrex bowl over the pan, making sure that the bottom of the dish isn’t touching the water.

3) Place the butter in the bowl. When it’s melted, add the chocolate and stir with a spoon while it melts. Keep stirring so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the dish and burn.

4) Add the cream and honey and stir until well mixed.

5) Remove the bowl from the pan. If you’re using the sauce for cake, spread some of the sauce onto one half of your cake, for the middle filling. Place the other half of the cake on top, and then starting from the middle, spread the remainder of the sauce over the cake until the top of the cake is covered. I usually have enough sauce to cover the sides of the cake too.

Chocolate cake with chocolate sauce and cream

I use this basic formula whenever I’m making a sponge cake; however many eggs you use, use twice the quantity (in oz) of flour, sugar and butter (for chocolate cake, substitute around 1/4 of the flour for cocoa).  My mum taught me how to make cake and I think the most important part of the recipe is that everything is done by hand – no machines, no packet mixes. Just you and the spoon. ;p

For this recipe I’ll list the quantities you’ll need for two 6″ cake tins (6″ diameter, 1″ deep or thereabouts).

Before you start, pre-heat the oven to Gas Mark 6 / 400F / 200C, and grease both of your cake tins (use greaseproof paper – the wrapper of a stick of butter will do – scoop up a little butter or margarine and rub it over the tins so that they’re well coated).

Ingredients:

3 eggs, whisked
4 oz self-raising flour
2 oz cocoa powder (NOT hot chocolate powder!)
6 oz caster / granulated white sugar
6 oz unsalted butter or margarine at room temperature
1/4 tsp baking powder

Preparation time: 15-20 minutes
Cooking time: around 15 minutes

Method:

1) Cut the butter into cubes. In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter and sugar. Using a wooden spoon, ‘cream’ (drag the butter into the sugar with the back of the spoon) the butter and the sugar together until the mix is fluffy, light and pale. Your elbow will hurt. Your forearm will hurt. No pain, no chocolate cake.

2) Pour a little of the whisked egg into the butter/sugar mix. With a fork, beat the egg into the mix until it is thoroughly mixed and not curdled. Pour a little more of the egg in, and beat again. Continue bit by bit until all of the egg has been whisked into the butter/sugar, and the mix is smooth without any ‘lumps’. This takes a lot of vigorous beating. Your elbow will hurt. Your forearm will hurt. You might sweat like a pig-dog. Remember – no pain, no chocolate cake.

3) Balance or hold a fine mesh sieve over the bowl, and sieve the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder into the bowl. Use a metal spoon to encourage the flour/powders through the sieve. Using the sieve to introduce the dry ingredients in this way ensures that your flour and powders are fine and full of air.

4) Using the edge of a metal spoon, ‘fold’ the flour/powders into the runny mix. Do this slowly, and only with the edge of the spoon. This will take a while, but eventually the ingredients will all be mixed together evenly and you will see no ‘bubbles’ of flour. This ‘edge of a metal spoon’ technique keeps the air in your mixture, helping it to stay light and fluffy so that your cake will raise nicely.

5) Distribute the mixture evenly into your cake tins. Try not to ‘handle’ the mixture too much, but spread it lightly over the base of both tins.

6) Place both tins in the center of the oven (if you have room on one shelf; otherwise, don’t worry too much) and bake for 15 minutes. It is very important that you do not open the oven door in the middle of the baking, as this will interrupt the rising process and make your cakes ‘collapse’.

7) This is perhaps the most vital part of the whole process. LICK THE BOWL!

After 15 minutes, open the oven door and, if you can do it without removing one of the tins, slide a metal knife or a toothpick into the middle of one of the cakes and if it comes out clean, your cakes are cooked. Otherwise leave them for another five minutes and try again.

Turn your cakes out onto a metal cooling rack (if you don’t have one, any clean flat surface will do – or even the ‘grill’ part of your grill) and let them cool off for 10-15 minutes.   When they’re cool enough, spread one of the surfaces of the cake with a filling of your choice, and place the other half on top of it. Spread the top too if you like.  There’s a recipe for the chocolate sauce I make here.

If you want to make a vanilla sponge instead of chocolate, use 6oz of self-raising flour, leave out the baking powder and cocoa powder, and add a teaspoon of vanilla essence. We only use the baking powder in the chocolate cake recipe because we’re substituting a part of the self-raising flour and the baking powder it contains, and because cocoa powder is heavier than flour.

Other yummy alternatives are making the plain (non-cocoa) sponge and grating the zest of one lemon or orange (or both) into the mix. Lemon and rosemary is lovely too.