Death by Chocolate

Goodness me its been a while since I posted and sorry for that.  I just can't believe how busy I've been with so many things which I will eventually get around to telling you all about, but first I will finish my post that I never got around to publishing:

We decided last week  that we were going to have another baking competition at work - this weeks theme 'Death by Chocolate'.  We used to have a chain restaurant in Auckland by this name which specialised in chocolate desserts funnily enough.  One of there specialties was a dish called 'Death by Chocolate' and if you actually managed to make your way through it you got your meal for free, a dinky little certificate and I think something along the lines of a meal voucher.  Unfortunately places like this don't tend to last very long in New Zealand - I think simply for the lack of population rather than popularity.

So my entry is 'Nigella's Quadruple Chocolate Cake' which I watched her make on one of her series.   I believe it was Nigella Feasts, you can find her book on Amazon.  I tell you if I had known it was going to be so darn easy I would have made it long before this!

I'll put the basic instructions here but check out Nigella's website for the full version.

INGREDIENTS

For the Cake:

* 200gm plain flour

* 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

* 50g cocoa

* 275g caster sugar

* 175g soft unsalted butter

* 2 eggs

* 1 tbsp real vanilla extract

* 80ml sour cream

* 125ml boiling water

* 175g dark chocolate chips (or whatever you prefer)

For the syrup:

* 1 tsp cocoa

* 125ml water

* 100g caster sugar

* 25g dark chocolate (from a thick bar)

Accumulate all ingredients and bring to room temperature.  Preheat the oven and line tin.

Put all cake ingredients (minus the boiling water and chocolate chips) in a processor and blitz till smooth (don't  you just love it when you don't have to cream the butter and sugar!).  Process again pouring boiling water down funnel slowly.

( my naughty husband got his finger in the way)

Manually stir in chocolate chips, pour mixture into the mold, put into the oven to cook for an hour and give the dishes to the husband to clean up in his own special way :-)

When cake is almost done (say 15 minutes before) start work on the syrup.  Put all ingredients (minus chunky chocolate) in a pot and boil till you have a syrup. When cake is done take out of the oven, pierce several times with a skewer then pour over syrup.  Wait for cake to become completely cold before removing from the tin. You can then cut with a sharp knife (or I like to use a vegetable peeler) to get flakes of chocolate to put on the top.  For this particular version I dusted with icing sugar for presentation.

YUM YUM!!! (my husband took to it with a knife when I wasn't looking).