Fudge Cake

I'm immensely pleased about being able to make this fudge cake, it is a recipe from the mid-1970s at least. As I mentioned in the early days of the blog, we were neighbours with a family from Afganistan. This is a recipe from them and given the name, I suspect it is an English recipe that has made its way to Afganistan originally. My Mum used to make it regularly, it was always very popular with guests, but at some point before the year 2000, the recipe got lost.

But it seems that my Mum had shared it with various friends over the years and now that everyone is in lockdown, a friend living in Milan piped up that she still has it and sent it back to my Mum. Thus it immediately made its way to me and I didn't waste any time baking it. In fact, the file that my Mum's friend sent over was actually titled with the originator's name, so there is no doubt that this is the correct recipe.

Ingredients

125 g butter + butter for greasing the baking tin
140 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder
270 g icing sugar
3 large eggs
3 tbsp desiccated coconut + more for the baking tin
chopped walnuts for decoration (optional)

Method

1. Melt the butter on low heat. Grease a 20 cm springform cake tin with butter and coat with desiccated coconut. Pre-heat the oven to 175 °C.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
3. Beat together the icing sugar and the eggs until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, making sure each part is well incorporated.
5. Pour in the butter and stir in the coconut into the cake mixture.
6. Transfer the batter to the cake tin and level off. Sprinkle with walnuts if using.
7. Bake for 1 h, check that it's done with a stick and if yes, then take out of the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes in the cake tin before carefully releasing it out onto a cooling rack.

I'm so glad this recipe got found again and that it turned out so well too. I have vague memories that my Mum used to make this as a tray bake, and cut it into small diamond shapes. In this case the baking time is about half, as the cake is thinner, but as I wasn't sure of what amount I'd end up with, I opted for the safe with the springform. Even after an hour, the cake was very nicely moist and retained a little bit of chewiness. We experimented with a caramel ganache as topping on it, which Lundulph really liked. I was happy with just the fudge cake on its own though. I think some whipped cream would have been nice, and no need to sweeten it either, the cake is quite sweet. We needed a week to eat the whole lot.

I also used a finer version of the desiccated coconut, which I spotted in our supermarket some time ago. It's not good for müsli, but for cakes where it shouldn't be too obvious, it is much better.

I skipped the walnuts because Lundulph seems to get an allergic reaction to them these days, though I suspect after an hour's baking it would have been OK. Nevertheless, he thoroughly enjoyed this cake, so I'll probably try it again and make it into a tray bake.