My Kitchen in the Desert

And what a yummy truth that eating was! Yes, the chocolate cake turned out well and here are the promised photos. Here it is, straight out of the oven.

Here’s the chocolate syrup bubbling away.

Here’s the cake, covered in syrup and now out of the tin. You can see it’s reasonably large, but it’s not as high as I’d have expected. That may have something to do with the cake pan size, it was slightly larger than specified in the recipe.

Finally, here is the cake (well, half the cake as I chopped it in half and froze one half for later), sprinkled with vanilla sugar and with a slice, ready to eat. Yum!

Overall I’m pleased with the result. Yes, I’ll definitely make this cake again. Many thanks to Nigella Lawson and her Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake recipe AND many thanks to Not Quite Nigella for her website which features many of Nigella’s recipes, tried, tested and photographed.  As I opted not to do the final covering of chocolate shards and sprinkled vanilla sugar over the cake instead, my cake is merely a Triple Chocolate Loaf Cake, but still moist and heavenly.

The cake is cooked. I’ll post photos later, probably tomorrow. But it’s so far, so good. The cake didn’t rise as much as I’d expected, and the furrow looks more like a disjointed earthquake, but it’s got that definitely home-made, old-fashioned cake look. My loaf pan is probably a wee bit bigger than suggested in the recipe (see Not Quite Nigella), but the next size down pan I own is way too small.

The recipe is dead easy to follow and prepare, even without a food processor. The chocolate syrup is awfully easy to cook. I’m not sure if I’ll bother decorating the cake with shards of broken chocolate, I may opt to dust with vanilla dusting sugar (thus making it only a Triple Chocolate Loaf Cake).

I watched Nigella Lawson’s Feast last night on ABC-TV. It was the episode featuring a gorgeous and quick mushroom pasta bake AND a decadently, divine and delightful Quadruple Chocolate Cake!

Just watching Nigella prepare and bake the cake filled me with inspiration and set my mouth to water. I wanted some!

I didn’t take notes during the show, and as I don’t yet have a copy of Feast, I went scouring the internet this morning for the recipe. I’d like to thank Not Quite Nigella for her her most wonderful site! As I type, the cake is in the oven baking. It smells gorgeous!

I opted to use natural, home made yogurt instead of sour cream (because it’s healthier) (like that really matters with this much chocolate??). But otherwise pretty much stuck to the recipe. Except I beat the mixture by hand, not having a food processor. I can’t quite justify buying a processor as I don’t do a lot of baking of cakes, and I’m happy to slice my vegetables with a knife.

I’m going to assume the cake turns out well … I’ll let you know later today.