CHOCOLATE PUDDING CHOCOLATE CAKE

This is the most chocolatey chocolate cake. The thing is though, I don’t like buttercream frosting, It’s much tooooo decadent, and I like my sweets a bit salty. So I made it to my preference, and I love this chocolate cake. I’ve been having a slice of cake every day for the past week. It’s been great.

This one is a bit of work, I’m not going to lie. There are 3 main components. The cake, the pudding, and the whip cream. The whip cream is pretty easy, just whipping some very cold heavy cream (double cream for the UK) together and then folding in the chilled pudding. So it’s more like 2 components with an extra step.

But it is quite a good cake. Very chocolatey and dense. And the hardest part is waiting for things to cool down rather than being technically difficult. But there are quite a few steps, so make sure you have all the ingredients and read the recipe through before getting started. This recipe was inspired by Bravetart , Erin McDowell , and Ina Garten .

Tag me on Insta @sosandrapark if you make this and Happy baking!

CAKE

Ingredients

• 250g Hot coffee (about 1 medium Moka pot)

• 70g Cocoa powder

• 200g Semi-sweet chocolate (I try to find 50% cocoa solids or higher. Did you know, if it has more than 35% cocoa solids, it’s classified as dark chocolate? Great nerdy article on chocolate.)

• 350g Dark brown sugar

• 70g Honey

• 250g Unsalted butter

• 9 eggs (5 eggs + 4 yolks)

• 260g All Purpose Flour

• 10g Baking soda

• 3 Pinches of salt (a 4 finger hefty pinch)

Equipment

• Heatproof Mixing bowls

• Sauce pan

• 3 x 6 inch cake pans or 1 medium sized sheet pan (mine was 32 x 25 x 2.5 cm)

  • I only have large pie dishes or sheet pans, so I poured the entire batter into the sheet pan and then cut out 2, 6-inch rounds once it was cooled, and then levelled them poorly, but it makes enough for 3, 6-inch cake pans, and if I had smaller cake pans, I would have used those.

Instructions

• Pre-heat your oven to 180*C/ 350*F

• Cube your block of butter into 1 inch pieces

• Crack your 9 eggs (5 eggs + 4 yolks) so they’re ready to go

• Get a sauce pan of water boiling on the stove

• Measure out your cocoa powder into a large ceramic or stainless steel mixing bowl.

• Pour the hot coffee over the cocoa powder. We’re trying to get the cocoa powder to bloom, so all the rich chocolatey flavors in the cocoa wake up.

• Add the chocolate chips, dark brown sugar, honey, and butter to the cocoa powder and coffee in the large ceramic mixing bowl. I used a double boiler method here to melt everything which is why I have the water boiling on the stove. Double boil, meaning, when the water is boiling, stack the mixing bowl (with the cocoa powder, coffee, chocolate chips, dark brown sugar, honey, and butter) on top of the sauce pan of boiling water. I always use a towel to hold the bowl here in one hand while stirring with the other. Remember to tilt, so steam can escape towards the back, away from you!

  • But you could also just dump everything into a pot and melt it on the stove if you want. I like to double boil because it’s a much gentler way of warming things up , and it’s easier to control the heat.

• Stir until everything is combined and liquid.

• Pull it off the heat, and add the flour, baking soda, eggs, and salt. Mix.

  • Make sure it’s not too hot before adding the eggs, which is why I have add flour before the eggs, to help cool the batter down before the eggs go in. It can be warm, just not hot.

• I took my medium sheet tray and lined it with parchment paper and then dumped the entire thing on to the sheet tray. But if I had small (6 inch) cake pans, I would use 3 of those.

• Pop it in the oven for 30 minutes.

• Leave it at room temp, let it cool completely.

• Now to pudding!

CHOCOLATE PUDDING

Ingredients

• 500g Milk

• 175g Semi-sweet chocolate chips

• 100g Heavy cream

• 70g Sugar

• 2 Eggs (just the 2 yolks)

• 2 Large pinches of salt (4 finger pinch)

• 30g Potato starch

• 20g Butter

Equipment

• Sauce pan

• Plastic wrap

• Strainer

Instructions

• Mix your sugar, 2 yolks, salt, and potato starch together in a ceramic bowl. It’s going to be like a thick paste. Set it aside for now.

• Add milk, chocolate chips, and heavy cream to a sauce pan and bring it to a low simmer, constantly stirring.

• Once the chocolatey milky mixture is liquid, add a little bit of it at a time to the yolk mixture, loosening it. We’re tempering the egg yolks so they don’t turn into a curdly mess in the hot chocolate mix.

• Add a little bit of the hot chocolate liquid to the eggs at a time until you’ve added about 1/3. Now take the wet, chocolatey egg yolks and add it all back to the pan on the stove. Stir, stir, over low heat.

• It will start to thicken up as it heats. I don’t like it to get too thick as I want a rather runny pudding that I can fold into my whip cream. I let it get to an Italian hot chocolate consistency, both thick and wet at the same time. Like pancake batter?

• When it’s where I like it, I like to strain it into another bowl, just in case there are lumps. I definitely had some lumpy bits, but hopefully yours is better.

• Add the knob of butter in, stirring so it dissolves. It will get all shiny and pretty here from the butter. You just made chocolate pudding!

• Put plastic wrap over it, so the plastic wrap is sitting directly on the chocolate pudding. This is so the pudding won’t form a weird skin on the top.

• Put it into the fridge so it can cool down.

CHOCOLATE PUDDING WHIP CREAM + SALTED NUTS

(If the pudding is not cold yet, postpone making the whip cream until the pudding is thoroughly chilled)

Ingredients

• 100g Mixed nuts (Whatever your preference. I had a bag of mixed nuts lying around from Lidl, but pecans, almonds, peanuts, they would all be great.)

• 2 Large pinches of salt (4 finger pinch)

• 300g Heavy cream

• 20g Potato starch

• Chilled chocolate pudding

Instructions

• Pre-heat the pan. I’m using stainless steel pan, so I always pre-heat cus it takes a while for it to heat up.

• The end is near. We’re almost done! The cake is baked. The pudding is chillin. Now take the nuts and give them a rough chop. A few pulses in the food processor would blitz the nuts in no time.

• Throw them onto the warm pan, add salt, and move them around, letting them get toasty.

• When the nuts are done, put them in a bowl and set them aside

• Now for the whip cream, just take the cold heavy cream, add the potato starch and then whip until it holds a stiff peak. Meaning, when you lift your whisk up through the cream, it will hold its shape.

  • Heavy cream has to be very cold for it to come together. So make sure you keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to whip. Some people even put the bowl and whisk in the fridge beforehand, while others create an ice bath for the bowl to sit in while whipping the cream.

  • Potato starch helps stabilize the cream since we’re not using gelatin. Powdered (also known as confectioner’s/ icing) sugar has starch in it, so if you wanted to add sugar to the whip cream, I would recommend adding that.

• We’re only going to use half the pudding, the rest I ate with a spoon. So add half the pudding into the whip cream, a bit at a time, using wide stroking motions around the bowl and then to the centre to incorporate the chocolate with the cream until there’s no streaks, trying not to deflate the beautiful whip cream.

ASSEMBLY

• Layer each cake with the chocolate pudding whip cream.

• Stack the layers on top of one another.

• I added more pudding whip cream to the sides and top.

• Finally, I added handfuls of the salted, toasted nuts to the chocolate pudding whip cream until I ran out.

• You did it. Enjoy !