Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake

This week my bookmarked recipe was somewhat decided for me, because this week I had to make a "wedding" cake. I say "wedding" because it's not a real wedding - my photographer friend Mark Goody needed a group to pretend to be at a wedding to try out some wedding photography and my young people got really excited about the idea, so it's part of our end of year bash for the group. They're all getting dressed up, our "bride" and "groom" are writing funny "vows" and I got to make a cake!!!!! Last week I took a vote amongst them to see what kind of cake they wanted, some wanted Victoria sponge and some wanted chocolate cake, so I'm making both!

For the Victoria sponge I added some extra vanilla and instead of using jam as a filling I mashed up a dozen raspberries and mixed them with 5 tablespoons of Dorie Greenspan's buttercream recipe from the Perfect Party Cake recipe and a tablespoon of caster sugar.

I know I've made a basic chocolate cake before but I wanted to try a different recipe. I have about 4 different chocolate cake recipes bookmarked in various places, but as soon as it was decided to make a chocolate cake I kept seeing other recipes that were quite tempting! Then I came across a book that was given to me when I was little - Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes with recipes by Roald's wife, Felicity and based on food that features in Roald's novels, stories and poems . I remember looking through this book a lot over the years and saying I'll make that one day.... well today was the day for Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake. It only seemed right that I make this chocolate cake seeing as I've had it bookmarked for so long!!! I remember the image I had in my head when I was reading about Bruce eating the chocolate cake in Matilda so I was very excited to be making this. However I didn't complete the whole recipe and left out making the coating for the cake so I could coat and decorate both cake with icing, but I'm sure I'll be making it again sometime because it looks delicious with the coating.

The photo from the book


And my cake.... excuse the mess around it please!!!


Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake

Serves 10-12

Ingredients
For the cake
8oz/225g plain chocolate
6oz/175g unsalted butter, softened
8oz/225g caster sugar
4tbsp/60ml/quarter cup plain flour
6 eggs, separated
For the coating
8oz/225g plain chocolate
8oz/225g double cream

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Grease and line an 8" cake tin (I used a 9.5" cake tin which worked great) with greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or on low heat in a microwave. Once melted mix in the butter and stir until melted. Remove from the double boiler.
3. Mix in the sugar, flour and lightly beaten egg yolks.
4. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until white and stiff.
5. Gently fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Then fold in the rest.
6. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes. There will be a thin crust on the outside and when tested using a skewer, it most likely won't come out clean as the inside will still seem uncooked, however the cake gets more firm when it has cooled.
7. Allow to cool for a while until the tin can be handled and the cake removed safely. Remove the greaseproof paper. The cake will most likely sink slightly, mine deflated from a large dome to a level top.
8. Set up a new double boiler and melt the chocolate and cream together until well blended. Leave to cool for a little while then spread smoothly over the top and sides of the cake.

The finished "wedding" cake topped with the mini Ruth and Rob bride and groom from our wedding - I decided to make this cake more fun looking than 'weddingy'