Mixed Berry Mudcake

Adapted from the August/September 2001 issue of Super Food Ideas.

Mixed Berry Mudcake
250g butter
250g Nestle Club Mixed Berry flavoured chocolate
2 tbsp instant coffee
1 1/2 cups SR flour
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 3/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp Galliano
Chocolate Sour Cream Icing
60g dark choc
a knob of butter (I think it would have been about 10g?)
1/4 cup sour cream
blueberries, or other berries to garnish

Melt butter, chocolate and coffee in a saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat. Sift the flours, cocoa and soda into a large bowl and stir in the sugar. Make a well in the centre and then pour in combined eggs, milk and Galliano. Gradually incorporate the dry ingredients, and then blend in the chocolate mixture. Pour into a greased and base-lined 22cm deep round cake tin.

Bake at 160°C for 1 - 1 1/4 hours, or until cooked when tested with a skewer. It may look slightly wet, but remove from oven unless the centre looks raw.

To make the icing melt the chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl. Microwave or over hot water, I'll leave that up to you. I added some icing sugar because my 70% dark chocolate was very bitter. I don't know how much, maybe 1/4 cup? Once you add the sour cream the icing will start to set so be ready to work quick. Spread across the top of the cake and garnish with berries.

Now, I had some real issues with this cake. Most likely because I only have one round cake tin. I think it is 22cm, but it was nowhere near deep enough. The batter filled the tin, leaving no room to rise. Perhaps I should have called this volcano cake, because it sure erupted in my oven! Even after it had done dripping everywhere, I had trouble getting it to cook in the centre. The top had formed a thick crunchy crust, but the middle underneath was still raw, even after 1 3/4 hours. I ended up breaking that up, flipping the pieces over so the raw side would cook, and upping the temperature to 180°C for another 15 minutes.

Broken disaster cake

Hopefully you'll have a bigger cake tin, and maybe a fan forced oven, and won't have all those problems. I'm pretty sure I can just slice the ragged edges off and ice the bottom though. I'll leave it in the fridge overnight, wrapped in gladwrap, and ice before taking it to my sister's birthday tomorrow.

The bottom isn't so bad

Normally I wouldn't tell you to buy or use a specific product by brand, but the Mixed Berry flavoured dark chocolate is so tasty, and no one else makes it. I had so much success using it in brownies that I had to give it a go in this cake. The original recipe just called for dark chocolate, and added glace cherries just before adding to the tin, to make Cherry Mud Cake (also using Frangelico instead of Galliano) but I'm not as big a cherry fan as I am of berries.

***I took this to the party and it went over a treat! My brother even told me that was how to make Black Forest Cake - and here I thought that was made with cherries! ;) So it was worth the hassles in the end. It tasted great too! I forgot to take a photo of the finished cake, but one of my sisters did, so I'll add that up when she emails it to me***