Chocolate Hit or Miss

Well I promised I'd get back to the food so I’ve come back with a very simple chocolate cake. It was easy to decide what to make - when I got back to work last week, after 5 weeks off, there were over 300 e-mails to go through. Most of them could be deleted (I hope I wasn’t a little too trigger happy with the delete button in my state of extreme jetlag) but there was one little non work related e-mail from K. Her e-mail said “I sampled a slice of this cake a week ago and it was DIVINE! (and it was made by one of my girlfriends who says she can't cook, so it actually IS a an Easy Chocolate Cake recipe!)." Well that was enough to get me hooked. Chocolate, divine and easy. My kinda cake.

I had most of the ingredients already at home so I just needed to stock up on some quality dark chocolate. I had a few friends to catch up with over the weekend so I thought it would be nice to come baring gifts of chocolate cake that we could enjoy together while drinking lots of cups of tea and catching up on the gossip. The cake didn’t take long to make and it smelt lovely while it was baking but if the truth be known I thought it was a little too dry. It did taste better when I added some cream or ice cream. It left a very dry crumby taste in my mouth. It was easy to make and lets be honest you would find it hard to go wrong with chocolate cake but I don’t think I will be making this one again. It could just have been the way I made it or my particular taste in cakes, I don’t know. If you do try this cake let me know your thoughts. Right, next ….

Easy chocolate cake

250g butter
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
3 eggs
2 cups plain flour, sifted
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup cocoa powder, sifted
1 cup sour cream
250g dark chocolate, melted

Chocolate glaze
150g dark chocolate, chopped
1/3 cup cream

Preheat oven to 160C. Grease a 22cm (9 in) round time. Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. Add the eggs and beat well. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa over the mixture, add the sour cream and chocolate, and mix until just combined.
Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 55mins until just set. Cool in the tin.
To make the glaze, combine the chocolate and cream in a saucepan over a low heat and stir until smooth. Allow the glaze to stand for 5 minutes before spreading over the top of the cake