Death by Chocolate

Angel cake is a very light, pale sponge made with no fat, and gently covered in soft icing. This cake is not angel cake. The sponge for this recipe is almost devil cake- but better! It has a more intense, rich chocolatey taste, a softer, moist sponge tantalizingly balanced with a rich and creamy chocolate fudge icing. It is devilishly moreish. Will your soul cope with the weight of a thousand syns that this cake evokes?

Ingredients:

• 10oz Plain flour
• 3 tbs (heaped!) cocoa powder
• 1.5tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1.5tsp baking powder
• 8oz of sugar (ideally a blend of brown and white)
• 3 tbs (heaped!) golden syrup
• 3 eggs (well beaten)
• 8floz sunflower oil
• 8floz milk (whole ideally)
• 1 tbs or 1/2 shot of the darkest espresso you can find
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Icing:

• Icing sugar
• Butter
• Cocoa
• Milk
• drop of vanilla flavouring

Method:

1. Sift all the dry ingredients into a big mixing bowl.
2. Add the wet ingredients.
3. Mix well.
4. Pour into a prepared cake tin (this mix is quite large, possible to get three 7″ cake layers)
5. Bake at 160*C (alter according to tin you choose to use) for 30-40 minutes.
6. To make the icing, melt a table spoon of butter in a heavy bottomed pan. For every 250g icing sugar, add 1tbsp cocoa powder.
7. mix together, and splosh milk sparingly in until a fudgey icing is achieved.

Variations:

This sponge is pretty versatile. It is strong enough to be made into gateaux, and soft enough to roll into Swiss roll.