A Chocolate Cake

Well, it was Chocolate Cake Day a few days back. Wonderful thing about social media, letting us know about important stuff like that (it’s Nutella day today I hear). Well, I thought, I should bake a cake. But really, something homey – like a cake you could just grab a slice of – not one that needed a lot of pomp and circumstance.
I just moved, and I now have 4 boxes (at least) of cookbooks in storage, after giving away a bazillion of them. I just don’t have the space. Plus, as I was reminded, there’s the internet. Well, one of the few cookbooks I kept out is Food52 Genious Recipes. There’s a chocolate cake in there by Nigella Lawson. Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake. Perfect!

Got my ingredients together. As I was gathering them I thought “I should add more chips and some dried cherries”.

Simple to put together. The only real trick is the alternate of boiling water and flour at the end. It reminded me of a Texas Sheet Cake I sometimes make.

 The batter turns out to be very thin. Really too thin for my additions. And then there’s the most frustrating thing about this recipe – the pans. No problem, line the pan with parchment. Check. But I read a sneaky little comment:”Pour any excess (batter) into a smaller cake or muffin pan”  Wait? What? Excess batter? I ended up with enough to fill about 10-11 cups. That’s a lot. And of course, no way that they cook at the same time… and then the overdone “cupcakes” won’t come out of the pan. Grrr…

  But then. I tried the loaf cake. Super moist, and quite good. And it is a good “keeping cake”. Very similar in flavor to the sheet cake I mentioned before. Not super chocolatey. But still very tasty.
As I mentioned, my real complaint with this recipe is the pan size. Why not say a larger pan? Or adjust the recipe for the pan size you note? But it was fun to make and was a nice treat.  Not sure that I will make it again, but certainly yummy.