Easy Chocolate Fudge Cake

Easy Chocolate Fudge Cake



Prep Time 10 mins
Cook Time 1 hrs
Total Time 1 hrs 10 mins
Course: Cake
Servings: 12 - 16
Author: Nagi | RecipeTin Eats

Ingredients

  • 8.5 oz / 240g dark chocolate, preferably 70% cocoa, broken into pieces (Note 1)
  • 1 3/4 cup / 385g caster sugar / superfine sugar (Note 1a)
  • 9 oz / 250g / 2 sticks unsalted butter
  • 1 1/4 cups / 312 ml milk (low or full fat)
  • 1/4 cup / 63 ml oil (vegetable, canola)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup / 45g cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 3/4 cups / 265g plain flour
  • 2 tbsp coffee granules, optional

Ganache

  • 1 cup / 250 ml heavy whipping cream (Note 2)
  • 8 oz /250g dark melting chocolate chips (US: semi sweet chocolate chips)


Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 160C/320F (fan forced / convection) / 180C/350F (no fan) (Note 3). Butter or spray a 22 - 25cm/9 - 10” spring form cake tin and line with parchment / baking paper. (Note 4)
  2. Combine sugar, butter, half the milk and chocolate in a saucepan over medium low heat. Stir until the butter and chocolate has melted and sugar is dissolved. Do NOT let it simmer or boil!
  3. Pour the chocolate mixture into a bowl. Whisk in oil and remaining milk.
  4. Whisk in eggs in until combined.
  5. Sift cocoa, baking powder, flour and coffee directly into the bowl. Whisk until smooth - some small lumps is ok.
  6. Pour into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour 10 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. The surface will crack (sometimes badly!) but sill subside when it cools and gets covered with frosting so don't stress!
  7. Remove sides from the cake pan and transfer to a cooling rack to cool.
  8. Ganache (Note 5)
  9. Place chocolate in a bowl.
  10. Place cream in a saucepan over medium high heat. When it is about to start simmering, remove it - don't let it come to a boil! Pour cream over the chocolate, shake the bowl to submerge all the chocolate under the cream. Cover bowl with a plate and set aside for 5 minutes.
  11. Stir chocolate with a spoon until smooth. Refrigerate for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until thickened to a spreadable consistency like peanut butter.
  12. Spread over the cake - tops and sides. Use a teaspoon in a swirling motion to achieve the textured surface you see in the photos.


Recipe Notes
1. I use Nestle Plaistow 70% Cocoa dark cooking chocolate. But any dark  chocolate from the baking aisle will work just fine! Don't use eating chocolate - it doesn't melt properly.
1a. Normal white / granulated sugar works ok too.
2. You must use HEAVY cream / THICKENED cream for this, not pouring cream. The cream needs to have 35% fat or more in order to ensure the ganache sets.
3. Fan forced / convectional ovens are those with a fan inside that circulates the air which allows things to cook faster and more evenly. Conventional ovens are those without fans which means the heat needs to be slightly higher.
4. You can also use a 28cm x 18cm cake pan OR 2 x 22cm/9" cake pans.
5. The chocolate ganache is pourable when warm, thickens to a spreadable consistency when mostly cooled (which is what you want to frost this cake) and when refrigerated for a few hours, hardens to a chocolate truffle consistency. If you leave it in the fridge for slightly too long i.e. too hard to spread, just microwave for 10 seconds to soften.
6. DIFFERENT COUNTRIES: This recipe is actually quite forgiving because it's so moist and fudgey so as long as you don't get the measurements way out, it will come out well. I am in Australia and have made this cake using both Imperial measurements (used by most of the world) and US measurements and I could not tell the difference. For example, 2 sticks of butter (8oz) does not equal 250g (which is 8.8oz), however, the recipe still works perfectly (also helps that US cups is slightly smaller than Aus cups).



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