There is a lovely English couple (Sophie and Toby) who work in the same hospital as the hubbie. They are amazingly adventurous, driving up to Lesotho for a weekend (it took us a week), and are such good social organisers, hosting huge braais on a regular basis.
This week it was Sophie's birthday and so a cake was in order. The basis of this recipe is taken from the BBC Good Food site but I adapted it slightly and made up my own icing. It went down a storm and provided another venue for my lovely cake animals.
It will freeze well, un-iced.
Ingredients (makes one loaf cake)
For the Cake
175 g softened unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
175 g caster sugar
3 large free-range eggs
140 g self raising flour
85 g ground almonds
1/2 tsp baking powder
100 ml whole milk
4 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted
100 g left over chocolate roughly chopped (I used some leftover hotel pillow chocs and some dark choc covered marzipan from Christmas)
For the Icing
145 g creme fraiche
210 g icing sugar, sifted
25 g cocoa powder, sifted
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 160C and grease and line a 2lb loaf tin (standard size).
2. Make the cake. Beat the butter and sugar with an electric whisk until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs, flour, ground almonds, baking powder, milk and cocoa...
... until smooth.
4. Stir in the chocolate chunks...
....and scrape into the tin....
Pop in the oven for 45-50 minutes until risen and a skewer poked in the centre comes out clean.
5. Allow to cool in the tin.
6. In the meantime make the icing. Whisk together the icing ingredients and pop in the fridge for a couple of hours.
7. When the cake is cold, remove from the tin and pour over the icing (there will be a little extra which you can keep in the fridge and serve warmed with vanilla ice cream or served alongside the cake).
How cute is that?
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