Who during the winter doesn’t want a soft and delicious dessert to eat together with a comforting cup of tea or hot milk? The soft chocolate cake is just that type of dessert perfect as comfort food, that you can prepare the night before and eat for breakfast, perhaps on Sunday. To prepare it, just follow a few simple steps, combining eggs, flour, melted dark and milk chocolate, oil, sugar, yeast and milk. Soft chocolate cake can be used also as a base for delicious desserts: try, for example, filling it with a veil of apricot jam and covering it with a delicate chocolate ganache, or serve it accompanied by tufts of whipped cream. This dessert is a real cuddle, also suitable to be served as a birthday cake.

Preparation

1

Cut the dark and milk chocolate into pieces and melt it in a bain-marie, placing it in a glass bowl that you will place over a pan of hot water. Leave to cool and, in the meantime, whisk room temperature eggs and sugar in a large bowl with electric whisks.

2

The egg and sugar mixture should be clear and frothy. Add the milk and oil and continue mixing. Add the melted and cooled chocolate and whip again with an electric whisk.

3

Finally add the bitter cocoa, the baking powder and the sifted flour, adding them a little at a time and always mixing with an electric whisk.

4

Brush a 24cm diameter pan with oil. Flour it lightly, pour the mixture into it and level it carefully.

5

Bake the cake in a static oven at 180° for 35 minutes. Before taking it out of the oven, always do the toothpick test, inserting a toothpick in the center of the cake. If it comes out dry, the cake is ready. Wait for it to cool before unmoulding and serving, then sprinkle with icing sugar.

Advice and tips

You can enrich your soft chocolate cake with dried fruit such as walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts and peeled almonds. You can also replace 50 g of flour with 50 g of coconut flour. You can put it in the dough some chocolate chips too just before baking.

If you are lactose intolerant you can use any vegetable drink, although we advise you to prefer rice or almonds for the sweetest taste.

The ideal percentage of dark chocolate for this preparation is the 70%-74%.

You can replace the 100 ml of seed oil with 120 g of butter. Instead, we advise against use margarine.

You can create stencils with parchment paper to cut out and apply on the cake, then sprinkle with icing sugar, so as to serve it with different and easy decorations.

storage

The soft chocolate cake is kept inside a bell for dessert for 3 days. You can heat the slices 15 seconds in the microwave before serving.

You can also freeze it, preferably portioned, for 1 month maximumdefrosting the slices if necessary.