Nigella?s Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

Hello dear readers! It’s been a little while between posts, and I do apologise for the radio silence. My husband and I just got home from the US at 1am yesterday morning. It was a wonderful trip with lots of time spent with old friends in the Bay Area and in LA County, but I was definitely ready to come home after 8 days there.  In part because I missed my familiar bed and bathroom, but also because I missed cooking, baking and blogging.

So when I awoke at 5am this morning after a measly 6 hours of slumber, and couldn’t for the life of me get back to sleep (oy jet lag…), I decided to use those few hours before church to bake something simple, with whatever ingredients I had in the refrigerator. I knew I wanted to bake some sort of a chocolate cake, so when I groggily thumbed through my lovely Nigella cookbook I landed easily on this recipe for Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake. I had all the ingredients handy, the recipe looked easy, and it sounded yummy.

I got a little nervous in the course of preparing the batter because (a) in my sleepy state I mixed up the order of some of the steps and (b) the batter looked really liquid. But when I pulled the baking tin out of the oven after the requisite time I knew things couldn’t have gone too wrong. The cake was somewhat cracked at the top because I think I overbeat the batter, but oh what an incredible aroma! There’s nothing quite like it. I think it was the combination of brown sugar and dark chocolate. Whatever it was, the smell was heavenly. And when I took a bite of the cake, I had a very hard time stopping at one piece (so I didn’t! haha). This is easily the most moist chocolate cake I have ever had, and it somehow manages to be rich and dense without being at all “jelat” (I’m not sure what the English equivalent is for “jelat” – heavy?). So very good. This goes into my list of repeat recipes for sure.

So here we go, my adapation of Nigella’s fabulous recipe (I just put some of the ingredient prep into the main set of directions because there’s quite a bit to do).

(adapted from Nigella Lawson’s “How to Be A Domestic Goddess”)

Ingredients:

225g salt soft unsalted butter

1-2/3 cups dark brown sugar (this is soft/packed sugar, NOT coarse brown sugar)

2 large eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

115g good quality dark chocolate (I used Valrhona 55% Equatoriale – I think it’s good to use one that’s not too dark)

1-1/3 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 cup and 2 tablespoons (about 250ml) boiling water

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 190degC. Line a 9×5-inch loaf tin with baking parchment.

*Nigella says to grease the loaf tin but I don’t find this necessary.

2. Heat chocolate over a bain marie (see this Wiki page or Step 2 of this recipe) until fully melted. Leave aside to cool.

3. Cream the butter and sugar using a wooden spoon or electric mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat in well.

4. Fold in the melted and slightly cooled chocolate, taking care to blend well but not overbeat lest you introduce too much air to the mixture.

5. Add the baking soda to the flour, and gently add the flour mixture alternately spoon by spoon with the boiling water until you have a smooth and fairly liquid batter.

6. Pour batter into the lined loaf tin and bake for 30 minutes. Turn the oven down to 160degC and cook for another 15 minutes. At the end of that time the cake will still appear a little mushy on the inside, so don’t panic when you see it. Take the cake out of the oven at the stipulated time.

7. Place the loaf tin on a rack and leave to cool completely before turning it out. When you slice the cake be sure to use a very sharp knife. Nigella says the cake improves if left for a day or so before eating but err… I don’t think I’ll get a chance to find that out this time round =)

Here are pics of most of the ingredients, and steps 1, 2 and 5. (Notice my pretty red silicon steamer attachment from Chef’n! I got it in Bangkok some time ago and I love it. I’m not sure whether you can get Chef’n products in Singapore, but you can definitely get them from Thailand, Hong Kong and the US.)

And that’s it, you’re done! I think the cake would be lovely with good vanilla ice cream, though it’s quite wonderful on its own. Nigella says she likes it spread with cold cream cheese so you could try that also.