cooking

Valentines Song...

I wanted to make a super fudgy chocolate pound cake for my DH yesterday. I think I got pretty close... I used Nigella Lawson's recipe for Madiera cake as the basis, but substituted chocolate for the lemon and made a few other changes as well...

150g salted butter (softened)
200g sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
100g best-quality cocoa powder + 2tbsp. neutral oil
200g + 3 tablespoons self-rising flour

Pre-heat oven to 170. Butter and Flour an 8" loaf pan. Cream together butter, sugar and vanilla. Blend the cocoa with the oil in a small bowl. When the cocoa mixture is smooth, add this to the butter & sugar mixture.
Add the eggs one at a time with a tbsp. of flour, blending well after each addition (I'm not sure why this is important, except one cake I made without doing it was the consistency of a brick...).
When the eggs are added in, stir in the remainder of the flour just until well incorporated.
Fold the mixture into your pan and bake for around 35 - 50 minutes. Do NOT over cook. After 35 min, check very carefully every five minutes.
Cake is done when a toothpick comes out with just a bit of crumb on it (clean = overdone).
Its a very buttery cake so refrigerate it. Serve cool, topped with whippped cream.