The Ultimate time-saving Chocolate Cake (with the perfect Chocolate Frosting)

I have eaten more than my fair share of chocolate cake over the years. I love to cook them almost as much as I like to eat them. Here's my check list for the perfect chocolate cake:

• it must taste of chocolate - not cocoa
• it must be moist
• it must not be too flat
• soft chocolate icing, not bitter and hard icing
• it must be easy and quick to make
• it must make people smile

So, after much experimentation I have found what, for me, is the ultimate chocolate cake and icing recipe combo.

My favourite cake recipe is by Nigella Lawson but I have altered the recipe slightly (due to personal taste and the need to make it as easy as possible using things you are more likely to actually have in your fridge).

Using 25cm tins x2. This will serve 8-10 people:

300g plain flour

300g caster sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

60g best-quality cocoa

260g soft unsalted butter

3 large eggs

2 teaspoons real vanilla extract

225ml sour cream

200ml natural yoghurt

25-50ml milk (start with 25ml and add the extra if the mixture looks too thick)

Here's the good part. I have tried the recipe the hard way (i.e. "cream together the butter and sugar, then...") and I have tried it the easy way (i.e. bung it all in together) and here's what I discovered

IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE!

None at all.

So, carefully measure out the ingredients. Put all the ingredients into a blender or food mixer together, and blitz! Just make sure that you don't over mix it. Turn off the mixer as soon as everything looks well combined. The mixture should be quite loose.

Bake at 180°C  for around 30 minutes (but keep checking).

Once your cake is perfectly cooked, leave them to cool in the tins for about 5 minutes and then turn out to cool completely. The cake should be very springy and light.

If you have time and would like to ice your cake too...

The best icing recipe I have found to go with this kind of cake does not come from Ms Lawson. I prefer Lorraine Pascale's chocolate frosting. It is simpler and more tasty in my opinion.

Beat 300g butter and 225g icing sugar together. Then mix in 150g melted and cooled dark chocolate. This should make gorgeous, soft, buttery icing that is easy to use.

Use about a third of this in the middle.

Then use a knife or palette knife to smooth the remaining icing all over the outside of the cake.

And there you have it. This is the fastest and tastiest chocolate cake that I can make! 

I challenge you to find a faster one!

...and if you do, I'd love to steal the recipe :-)

Fastest cake in the West? ...Scone!

(Apologies first of all for the title. I have a fiancé fond of 'jokes'!) x

Home for the summer at my parent's house in a quiet sleepy village in Yorkshire, there has been very little call for cooking as the restaurant of Mum/Dad is always in operation. :-)
Yet I could not let the summer pass me by without eating at least one really good scone.

That is not to say that other people do not make a decent scone! Far from it. But honestly, the way to get a good scone is to simply bake them yourself. Scones can be very dry and very boring but they will never be either if eaten soon after they come out of the oven!


My Grandmother does the ultimate summer tea with sandwiches, boiled eggs, salad and cakes. This yumminess is never complete without heaps of golden scones. Or is it scOnes?

"I asked the maid in dulcet tone

To order me a buttered scone

The silly girl has been and gone

And ordered me a buttered scone."

This recipe comes from a VERY old and frankly now disgusting cookbook that belongs to my mum. But the disgustingness of the book merely shows how well used it is - do not judge this book by its greasy and stained cover! Everything I ever made as a child came from that book. It's full of classics.

The recipe goes:

Mix a pinch of salt, 300g flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and 75g cooking marg.
If using a machine, mix slowly until you get a breadcrumb consistency, or rub in the marg by hand.

Stir in 50g sugar.

Put 1 egg into a measuring jug and then add milk up to 125ml. Add this mixture but leave a tiny bit of it to one side.

Work the mixture into a soft dough.

Roll out to just over a centimetre thick (the recipe says 12mm but I say the fatter the better!)

Use a 5cm cutter

 Cut out the scones and place them on a lightly floured baking tray.

Brush the top of each with the remaining milk/egg. This will give the characteristic golden sheen. Cook in the oven @ 240°C for around 10 minutes but keep an eye on them as they sometimes take a little less time. Once they are risen and golden, you'll know that they're done.

Allow to cool, for as long as you can stand, and eat within 1/2 days.

 Serve with butter, jam and clotted cream for a real treat!

We tried ours with a rather fancy gooseberry and elderflower jam - delish.

Pinkies out - it's tea time!