Chocolate fudge cake
Not all chocolate recipes have to be ind-blowing in their effects on your body. I discovered this marvellous joy in a terrific American cooking magazine called Eating Well. This is not one of these New Age products which scolds and berates like an old Irish cleric breathing fire and brimstone from the pulpit. This is a magazine which recognises that we are weak, fragile, when it comes to controlling what we eat.
We know we shouldn’t, but we do, don’t we? And of all the unmentionables we eat, chocolate is probably the worst. But here was a health magazine with the richest chocolate dessert you have seen on the cover. Inside I discovered that chocolate freaks with health problems can get the same sort of a kick by using cocoa. Almost all cocoa powder we use has a fat content of between 10 and 20 per cent. Unsweetened chocolate is about 52–56 per cent fat; and semi-sweet chocolate about 36 per cent fat. It was just the motivation I needed to start experimenting with cocoa.
3 eggs
150g caster sugar
50g cocoa powder
¼ cup vegetable oil, or 1 cup melted butter or margarine
½ cup strong coffee, best made with a plunger or machine
80g double-sifted plain flour
50g almond meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1
In a mixer, whisk the eggs with the sugar until the mix is very light, very fluffy. You cannot overbeat the mixture.
2
While the eggs are beating, stir the cocoa into the oil and coffee, whisking gently to bring it all together.
3
Reduce the speed of the beater and drip the chocolate mix into the eggs, slowly, gently, making sure you do not lose that wonderful fluffiness.
4
Stop the beating and fold in the flour with the baking powder and the almond meal, gently, gently, maintaining the lightness of the mix.
5
Grease well a flat tin, like a lamington tin, and put some greaseproof paper on the bottom. Pour in the chocolate batter and bake at 200°C for about 20 minutes, checking all the while. If you bake the mix in a narrower, deeper tin, it will take longer.
WINE: Take with a cup of great coffee or well-brewed tea.