Shhh, don't tell the diet police

DD (my boyfriend) requested a cake yesterday. I put my foot down when he made a beeline for the packet cake mix at the supermarket and told him I'd make him one from scratch. I felt a little decadent, so I went straight to Nigella. More specifically, to her Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake from How to be a Domestic Goddess. It was a pretty easy cake to make actually: cream the butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, mix, add chocolate, mix. Fold in flour and water alternatively and ta-da! Ready. Unfortunately, I seemed to miss the bit in the recipe where it specified "loaf tins" (the name of the recipe went right by me too) and made it in 2 small springform tins. I read the bit about the size of the tin and even industriously got out my ruler and measured my large springform tin and rejected it because it was "too big".

Oh well. Blogger is not playing with me this morning, so photos to come, but they actually turned out pretty good. Nigella warns that the cake may sink due to its denseness, but mine seemed quite stable. They didn't rise as much as I'd hoped (just because I was frugal with the amount of batter I put in each cake tin so I'd have two cakes - or more batter to eat! The raw mixture is heavenly) so I decided to sandwich the two together for a layer cake.

see my loaf tins?

Problems started when I found that almost every Nigella icing recipe has cream of some kind in it, and I had no cream. So, to the internet I went to find an icing recipe sans cream but with melted chocolate. I found one, and got to working. However, it didn't register with me (again) that 16 ounces of icing sugar is actually quite a lot - see, I like metric! And even though Recipezaar kindly has an option to convert to metric it still didn't click, and I ended up with a huge amount of icing. Plus, I didn't quite have enough icing sugar and I should have really adjusted the amount of milk I added so it didn't end up completely runny, but I didn't. Insert sad face here.

Anyway, mini-disasters notwithstanding (I didn't even tell you about when I sneezed tipping the icing sugar from its bowl to the sifter - I didn't sneeze into the bowl, don't worry - and knocked the bowl, spilling icing sugar I couldn't spare everywhere and when I was trying to tip the leftover icing into a freezer bag the bag slipped and the icing kept pouring - I saved that one though), I iced the cake and then immediately moved it to the fridge so it could set without running everywhere. That was last night, and this morning when I checked I still have icing on top, so phew!


And just to rub salt in the wound, when I was putting the cake into the fridge to set the icing, I had to move a couple of things so it would fit. One of the things I moved? An unopened carton of double cream. Which I thought we didn't have.

We haven't tried any yet, the boys (I live with DD and a friend) weren't allowed to touch it until the icing had set a bit and by that time I'd gone to sleep. Now I can't wait for morning tea!


Edited: we had some for afternoon tea today. Very rich and yummy. Even better after 15 sec in the microwave because the chocolate in the icing starts melting...