Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake

Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake

There are lots of decadent chocolate cake recipes out there now, however this one with the addition of liqueur, dark chocolate  and raspberries is in my mind winning the race at present. This is one of those cakes where it is preferable to make it on the day of eating, and if possible eating it only an hour or so after it comes out of the oven, especially if being served as a dessert. However, if you are serving it for morning or afternoon tea, it would be fine to make it the day before. It will still taste fantastic and receive rave reviews. My daughter was cooking this cake last week when I called her, to take into work for afternoon tea, and that is how I heard about this cake. It is such an easy cake to make. It can work unfruited as well, by replacing the raspberry liqueur with a tablespoon of dark rum and serving it with coffee ice-cream. Frozen raspberries can be used, but it's best not to thaw them, and toss them in Plain flour before adding to the cake. This prevents them from sinking to the bottom.

I cooked this during the week for my friend Kati, and her parents who are visiting from Germany, to compliment the Aussie BBQ. There is always enough of this cake left over to send some home with your guests as well which they love.

This recipe is taken from the wonderful Nigella Lawson's repertoire  of recipes and has been reincarnated many times by cake lovers.

Ingredients:

185g self-raising flour
30g  good quality cocoa powder
250g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons Creme de Framboise  or Creme de Dijon Bardinet
95g castor sugar
95g muscovado sugar
250g good dark chocolate
185ml black coffee and 185ml water, or instant coffee made up with 2 teaspoons instant coffee and 370ml water
2 eggs, beaten slightly
250g fresh raspberries or around 350g raspberries if frozen, plus more to serve if desired
(Neil made up some espresso coffee for me from his roasted Venezuelan beans and the flavour permeated the cake beautifully)

Preheat oven to 180 deg. C or Gas Mark 4. (A moderate oven) 

Method:

1. Butter a 22-23cm springform cake tin and line the base and sides with baking parchment.
2. Sift the flour and cocoa powder together in a bowl, and set aside.
3. Put the butter, Framboise, sugars, chocolate, coffee and water in a thick-bottomed saucepan and stir over low heat until everything melts and is thick and glossily smooth.
4. Stir this mixture into the sifted flour and cocoa. Beat well until the mixture is smooth and glossy again, then beat in the eggs. This will now be runny which is normal. Don't add more flour as the mixture firms up nicely whilst cooking thanks to the wonderful chocolate setting as the cake cooks.
5. Pour the smooth mixture into the prepared springform cake tin until you have covered the base with about 2cm of the mixture and then cover with the raspberries.  
6. Pour or spoon the rest of the mixture onto the top of the raspberries. I like to spoon the mixture over the raspberries so that they stay put and don't jump up through the mixture. However, you may have to push some of the raspberries back under the cake batter by hand.
7. Put into the preheated oven and bake for 40-45 minutes. Don't try and test by poking in a skewer as you don't want it to come out clean. The texture is like a delicate, but  dense mousse.
8. When it is cooked, the top will be firm and slightly cracked. This is easily masked by some icing sugar sprinkled on top.
9. When the cake is ready, take it out of the oven and put on a rack. Leave it in the tin for about 15 minutes and turn out.
10. Decorate with fine icing sugar, and serve with fresh or frozen raspberries and cream, or coffee icecream.

Thanks for dropping by,

Best wishes

Pauline

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