the hungry mum

I was sent a copy of ‘After Toast – Recipes for Aspiring Cooks’ by Kate Gibbs to review in my day job as a journalist at The Leader newspaper. I brought it home to test some recipes and the first one to get the Hungry Mum treatment was her recipe called All About The Chocolate Loaf. I adore chocolate cakes that actually use chocolate, rather than cocoa, and this delivers that intense choc hit I was after. Ms Gibbs said the cake improves over a day or two but I served mine that evening. She suggests sesame & almond praline as an accompaniment but I lathered mine with dark chocolate ganache and walnut pieces.

GATHER:

1 1/3 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarb soda

130g dark choc melted

200 g butter, diced, at room temperature

1 ¼ cups brown sugar

2 large eggs

splash vanilla

1 cup boiling water

LET’S GET TO IT:

Preheat oven to 190C and grease and line a 23cmx 13cm loaf pan.

Sift flour with bicarb, set aside.

Cream butter and sugar in bowl of electric mixer until pale, then add eggs one at a time, then vanilla.

Fold in melted chocolate. Add one heaped spoon of flour at a time and boiling water alternately, stirring after each addition [I didn’t end up using all the water]. Batter will be runny. Make sure there are no lumps.

Pour into pan and bake for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 170C and cook for another 15 minutes.

Remove and allow to cool for about two hours before turning on a wire rack. When cold dress with choc ganache or icing sugar.

Tags: baking, chocolate, easy, ganache, loaf, recipe