Le Perchoir blog

A touch of rich chocolate for the festive season

Although not a huge chocolate fan myself I do appreciate that my guests will usually love it and this one is a proven winner – it’s really rich so goes a long way – I picked the recipe up from a magazine recently but can’t remember where, so some of you may recognize it.

The cake needs a lot of eggs and my friend Jan had arrived the previous day with some wonderfully fresh laid eggs from her chickens, which made the baking all the more pleasurable. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare the mixture and 30 minutes or so to cook.

You’ll need:-
200g unsalted butter
200g dark chocolate (70% or more)
5 eggs
1 tbs self raising flour
200g icing sugar

Put your oven on to 180 degrees (gas mark 4)

Using the bain marie technique – melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl over simmering water. When the ingredients have melted together tip the chocolate and butter in to another bowl and add the eggs one at a time to avoid curdling, mixing well all the time. Then beat the flour and icing sugar in until all is well blended together. Pour the mixture into a cake tin which you have previously greased and floured – I used a 23cm one as I wanted to cut thin slices.

Bake in the oven for about 25-35 minutes until solid but with a slight give to the touch. When the cake is cool serve with a scoop of good vanilla ice cream with fruit coulis drizzled over it for added colour. I make batches of fruit coulis when fruits are in season and store them in small plastic containers in the freezer – strawberry, raspberry and apricot in particular look lovely with this sort of dish in the winter.

Hope that all you chocaholics enjoy this one – Happy Christmas to you all.