Chocolate Fudge Cake

or... does my bum look big in this?

This is another recipe I made for my boyfriends birthday. It came from his mother. She is getting back into baking as she is looking for a new job. She sent the recipe to me so I could making it and everyone here could try it out. And they did! The chocolate fudge cake was the first cake to be finished. Everyone went straight for it! Now is that a sign that Dutchies love chocolate or is it a sign that Dutchies are affraid to taste new unfamiliar cakes... You decide ;-)

Before I made this cake I had never made fudge before. I had eaten it but that was about it. The fudge recipe required a lot of powdered sugar. That was causing me some problems. As the Netherlands is not a baking country it can be really hard to find certain ingredients. Powdered sugar is one of them. Dutchies only use it for dusting cakes, poffertjes or oliebollen, but not for icing a cake or doing other things with it. Therefore you can buy powdered sugar, but not in big quantaties. As i didn't want to buy lots of small packages of powdered sugar, and spend lots of money in the process, I did some research and came up with a plan to make my own.

Making powdered sugar:
I did this in small quantities at a time as I wasn't sure if this was going to work. But it did work, so next time I can do more at a time.
To make powdered sugar you have to put some castor sugar in a blender and blend this for 1 minute. You need to make sure that all the sugar is really fine and powdery. To test this you can rub some between your fingers. If you still feel some crystals the sugar needs longer in the blender.

Now that you have the right amount of powdered sugar you can make the cake and the fudge.

Chocolate Fudge Cake
Ingredients:
3,5 tablespoons Cocoa
4 oz Butter or Margerine
8 fl. oz. of water
4 fl. oz of veg or sunflower oil (not olive oil)
12 oz. sugar
8oz Self-raising flour
2 Eggs
4 fl. oz. milk
0.5 tspn Baking Soda
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)

Method:
1. Preheat the oven at 180 C.
2. Line a 2lb loaf tin. (You can use a round tin if you like.)
3. Place cocoa, butter or margerine, oil and water in a pan, gently bring to just boiling. Stirring all the time so as not to burn the cocoa.
4. Remove from the heat and add the sugar and flour, stir gently in. Make sure all the flour is thourogly mixed
5. In a separate bowl beat the eggs and milk together then add the baking soda and vanilla, mix together quickly then add this to the pan mixture.
6. Quickly and gently mix together pour into the baking tin and bake at 180c for 1 ¼ to 1 ½ hours.

Fudge Icing:
Ingredients:
1,5 tablespoon Cocoapowder
4 oz Butter or Margerine
3 Fl. oz. Evaporated Milk (cream can be used instead)
1 lb Icing Sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

Method:
1. In a pan melt butter or margarine into the milk or cream,
2. Add the cocoa, icing sugar, and vanilla. Mix well. Do not get too hot as the sugar will burn, it should not boil.
3. Pour this topping over the top of the cake. Letting it cover all 4 sides and top of the cake*. It becomes easier to do when the fudge is slightly cooler.

Any unused topping can be kept in the fridge and if it is reheated in the microwave it can be poured over ice cream. Or pour it into a lined square pan and when set cut it into pieces. I loved eating it this way too.

*According to my boyfriend this is not how his mum put the icing on the cake. She left the cake in the form and poured the fudge over the cake like how you do normal icing. When I make this cake again I will make it that way and post another picture of the cake here.