Chocolate Mud Cake can be either dense and moist and incredibly rich, like you’re slicing into a great big slab of, well, mud.  Or it can be dense and rich but also kind of dry, like a regular cake.  This particular mud cake is of the latter variety.  You can tell, by looking at it, that it’s not a moist mud chocolate cake.  But it isn’t until you’ve had one slice of this apparently fairly harmless looking cake that you suddenly realise you can’t get up out of your chair.

You’re just going to have to make it, to see what I mean.

I made this for my brother-in-law’s engagement party, and for a pre-Christmas dinner party with our neighbours, and for my friend Mel’s 40th birthday party (I made it half as big again for that).  This is a great cake to make if you want to impress people.

You can serve it like this, plain, with a dollop of thickened cream and some berry coulis.  Or you can cover it with a thin layer of ganache and then sprinkle it with chocolate flakes from a good chocolatiere.  Either way, you’ll get to experience the delicious sensation of not being able to move for a while.

Muddy Chocolate Cake

from Marie Claire’s cookbook, ‘Flavours’, by Donna Hay.

300g /10 oz dark couverture chocolate, chopped (get the good stuff)

250g /8oz butter

5 eggs, separated

1/4 cup superfine (caster) sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup self-raising flour

Preheat oven to 130C (260F).

Place the chocolate and butter in a saucepan and stir over low heat until melted and smooth.  Set aside.

Place the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until the mixture is thick and pale.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg yolk mixture.  Sift the flour over the top and gently fold through.

Carefully fold the egg whites through the mixture (use a spatula, keep scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl… it seems to take a while to mix it all together but persevere, and be gentle, to keep as much air in it as you can) and then pour into a 20cm (8 inch) round cake tin, base-lined with non-stick baking paper.  Bake for 75 minutes or until cake is firm.

Cool in the tin.

Note – the flavour and texture of this cake are best when it is served at room temperature, not chilled.