World?s Best Chocolate Cake Recipe

This is, I believe, the World’s best chocolate cake recipe. Unfortunately though, I didn’t come up with it!

That’s not to say I didn’t try. Rarely do I follow a recipe without making some kind of tweak, and tweak I did, but couldn’t improve this recipe from its original greatness.  Originally called “Easy Rich Chocolate Cake” and found in River Cottage: Everyday, surely this is the greatest chocolate cake in the world – it’s made of little more than chocolate and butter, after all, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Greatest Chocolate Cake in the World?

Still, my variants – a cherry and a coffee variant – weren’t bad, (hence I’ve included them below), just that they can’t match the original in its chewy, chocolaty simplicity.  My photograph hardly does it justice.

The chocolate I used in preparing this cake was Hotel Chocolat’s 80% Dark Organic Hacienda iara Purist bar (try saying that after a few beers), but any good quality dark chocolate will do – just steer clear of the cheap sugary brands.

Start by pre-heating your oven to 170 degrees c (340 f), and grease a 23cm (9 inch) spring form cake tin, lining the base with baking parchment.

Next, put your butter and chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a pan of water on a low heat.  Stir occasionally until melted.

Meanwhile, whisk your egg whites until they hold firm peaks.  In a separate bowl whisk your yolks with sugar.  When the chocolate is melted, drizzle this into the yolk mixture while whisking.  Finally, fold in the flour / almond mix.

The next step is to incorporate your egg whites.  Begin by adding stirring spoon of the white to the chocolate mix, then fold in the remainder with as gentle a touch as possible.

Pour the cake mixture into the tin, and put into your oven for about 30 minutes or until it is almost set.  Cooking it a little longer to be sure doesn’t seem to hurt any, but it does give a slightly different end result.

Variation 1: Stir a large tablespoon of cherry jam into your chocolate mixture.  If doing this, skip about 25g of the butter.

Variation 2: Stir 1 tsp of instant coffee into the molten chocolate.  If doing this, keep the cocoa percentage of the chocolate at 70%, not higher.

On a tangent, my spring form cake tin partially unsprung while cooking the cake this time around; this resulted in butter dripping down the the base of the oven during the cooking process.  Boy, does burnt butter smoke!  It’s taken days to get rid of the smell!