Chocolate Fudge Loaf Cake!

Name: Chocolate Fudge Loaf Cake!
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 60 min
Total time: 330 min
Ingredients: 175 g Dark Chocolate; 175 g Unsalted Butter; 2 tsps Instant Coffee; 100 ml Boiling Water; 135 g Plain Flour; 25 g Cocoa Powder; 1 tsp Baking Powder; 1/4 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda; 300 g Light Brown Sugar ((or caster sugar)); 3 Medium Eggs; 75 ml Buttermilk; 125 g Unsalted Butter ((room temp - not stork/spread)); 250 g Icing Sugar; 25 g Cocoa Powder; 1/2 tsp Vanilla ((optional)); 50-75 ml Evaporated Milk; Sprinkles; Chocolates

August 8, 2020

Written by Jane's Patisserie

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A Thick, Fudgey and Delicious Chocolate Fudge Loaf Cake, topped with Luscious Chocolate Fudge Buttercream Frosting, and more!

Loaf cakes… loaf cakes… I wish I’d known about your popularity before this past year, otherwise I would have done more recipes sooner. I honestly cannot get my head around how popular my loaf cake recipes have been! So, here is another..

My Terry’s Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake, and my Lemon Drizzle Loaf Cake have been super popular recently – and I love it! Although, I have had request after request for a really lovely, dense, fudgey and amazing chocolate fudge version, so here it is!

I couldn’t resist this from the beginning because you all know how much I adore a chocolate fudge cake. My Chocolate Fudge Cake Traybake and the Cupcake version have always been popular, but nothing is as popular as the layer cake version! They all directly inspire this one, as they are all based around the same recipe!

As you may be aware, a classic and easy chocolate cake is based around five ingredients, usually. Flour, cocoa powder, eggs, butter and sugar – they make a chocolate Victoria sponge style cake, and I use that style of recipe all the time in my various bakes.. but this one is very very different.

This sponge recipe uses ELEVEN ingredients, so quite different. Flour, cocoa powder, butter, eggs and sugar are still all there, but so is instant coffee, water, dark chocolate, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, and buttermilk. This will sound a bit extreme, but trust me – it’s worth it.

This cake recipe is very easy to make. You need to melt the dark chocolate and butter together until smooth – like you would for the base of a brownie mixture – and dissolve the coffee into the water.

YOU CAN’T TASTE THE COFFEE in the end results.. so PLEASE, trust me here, and use it. The coffee is designed to bring out a rich and delicious chocolate flavour. It’s 100% worth it!!

Instead of self raising flour, you use plain flour, baking powder, and bicarbonate – they react with the other ingredients and create the texture you are after! You whisk the dry ingredients together with the sugar into a bowl with just a spatula or something – you really do not need or want to use an electric mixer here.

You then whisk the eggs and buttermilk together – buttermilk is there to react with bicarbonate to create a rise in the cake – it’s very different to your regular use of self raising flour!

However, if you don’t want to buy a pot of buttermilk (which is found with the creams in the uk) you can make your own using whole milk (full-fat) and whisking in 1tbsp of lemon juice and leaving it to sit. It will look split almost, but that’s what you want!

You then combine the three different mixes together, with a whisk – stir as little as possible, pour into the tin and bake! As it’s a loaf cake, it will take a long time to bake – loaf cakes are similar to bundt cakes in that sense.

I use my favourite 2lb loaf tin as normal, but they can also vary in size (never understood why?!) – so if you think your tin is too full, make a few cupcakes with the spare mix. I usually fill my tin up to about 3/4 full, so by the time it rises, the tin is full!

For the frosting, I used the same idea as the best ever frosting ever – evaporated milk being the key ingredient. The only thing is that yes you will have some evaporated milk leftover, but don’t worry, you can freeze it!

With loaf cakes I just like to slather the frosting all over the top, or pipe, but it’s up to you – I often use some strawberries and some more chocolate goodies to decorate and it’s done, but that’s up to you – sometimes just chocolates are good! It’s a bit more effort with the ingredients, but otherwise, it’s such an easy cake to bake! I hope you love it!