Chocolate Cake Comfort Food

At the end of February it was dad's birthday and it meant that he was another year closer to the big six-zero. It was also the time when I found out that my annual membership subscription at the Golf Club was due and that it was too late in the year to resign without paying the full fee. As a result of these two events it seemed only right to cook a bit of comfort food so I set about making a good old fashioned chocolate sponge cake.

I first put eight ounces of margarine and eight ounces of caster sugar into the mixing bowl and then creamed them together with a wooden spoon until the mixture was fluffy and there were no loose grains of sugar in the bowl.

I then took two eggs and cracked them in another bowl and whisked them together thoroughly. The eggs were then poured gradually into the bowl with the butter and sugar and mixed together. At this point the mixture looked very soft and sloppy so I took six ounces of self-raising flour plus two ounces of very dark cocoa powder and added these into the bowl a little at a time until the mixture was a lot thicker. Once there was no trace of the flour and it was totally combined into the mixture  the job was done.

I meanwhile greased with margarine a 15cm wide and 3.5cm deep cake tin. I took care to add flour to the bottom of the tin to help ease the cake mixture off it after it was cooked. I then poured the mixture into the cake tin and baked it in the oven for 45 minutes on 170 degrees (180 if you don't have a fan oven).

After the mixture had cooled I turned it out onto a wire tray, took a large bread knife and sliced through the middle so as to cut the top of the cake off. I then rested cut off top on the bottom of the cake and realised it was time to make the filling. I sieved four ounces of icing sugar into a bowl and then creamed them together with an ounce of cocoa powder. I then added a tablespoon of hot water to the mixture and stirred it in until I had butter cream that was as thick as a very dense white sauce. I then spread this over the bottom half of the cake and placed the other half on top of it to form a sandwich.

In order to finish the cake off I put seventy grams of dark chocolate into a bowl that I heated over a pan of boiling water. Once the chocolate had melted I took the bowl off the hob and put an ounce of margarine into it. I then spread it over the top of the cake and left it to set.

The long process was worth it, as the cake provided the perfect comfort food bearing in mind the negative circumstances surrounding its initial creation. The fact I used dark cocoa and dark chocolate meant that it was sweet and tasty without being too sickly, which it would have been had I used milk chocolate to make it.