‘Let them eat cake’ . That’s all jolly well but where’s the choice? If I was lucky enough to have one it would have to be the ‘Curly Wurly’ cake! For the love of cake this is supremely delicious and extremely naughty, it knocks the socks off any other chocolate cake I have baked pretty much ever. Just in case any of you happened to miss the article 2 weeks ago in the saturday Telegraph magazine I will share the secret with you and increase your calorie intake by several hundred or possibly thousand! Imagine my joy when I noticed ‘Gerhard Jenne’, the genius behind the famous London patisserie, ‘Konditor & Cook, had spilt the beans and divulged some of his most sort after recipes to the masses; ‘there is a God’, I muttered as I set about recreating his famous, legendary cake.

The cake was surprisingly easy to make. The dark chocolate sponge is straightforward, I did not have the right size sandwich tins (I never ever seem to) and hence rather bravely cooked it in a 24cm round, loose bottomed tin. I only made one cake so to speak, as opposed to splitting the mixture as he suggests into 2 x 17cm cake tins. To be honest it was fine, maybe not perfectly cooked to a patisserie chef, but it was as good as. Having baked the cake I then split it in two. Now the only aspect of the recipe that I found a little dubious is I just could not get the icing to work. I did follow the recipe but found that I ended up with a breadcrumb like texture as opposed to icing. At this stage I went off piste,  added more cream cheese and a little more butter, that seemed to do the trick, yet I will happily go back to the original recipe to try it again and will hopefully have more luck next time.

‘Curly Wurly’ cake on outing one met with squeaks of excitement from the little people. The ‘blue’ one inhaled it and demanded more, the ‘pink’ one was a little more reserved, declaring it to be ‘very rich’, that however did not stop her from eating it. This cake keeps well for several days, that’s if you can hold the vultures and gannets at bay. It is a very bad cake but devilishly good. If you have a weakness for chocolate cake this one is certainly for keeps. It is certainly going into my recipe archive forever.

Curly Wurly Cake – Gerhard Jenne – the recipe was featured in the The Telegraph Magazine 26 th April 2014

Dark CHocolate Sponge

250ml milk

275g soft light brown sugar

100g dark chocolate (54% cocoa solids) chopped

175g plain flour

1sp baking powder

100g salted butter, softened

2 medium eggs, lightly beaten

Heat the oven to 190c, gas mark 5. Line 2 17 cm sandwich tin with baking parchment.

Heat half the milk and half the soft brown sugar together in a saucepan until the sugar has dissolved, then add the chocolate and stir over a low heat until melted. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and cocoa powder together and set aside. Put the butter in a large bowl with the remaining sugar and beat together until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs, alternating each addition with a tablespoon of flour mixture to prevent it from splitting.

Fold in the rest of the flour, followed by the remaining milk, then add the still warm chocolate milk.Mix until smooth, it will have a very runny consistency.

Divide the mixture between the 2 tins and bake in the over for 20 -25 minutes, until risen and firm to the touch.

Cream Cheese Frosting

20g full fat cream cheese

400g icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

50g unsalted butter

Put the cream cheese and vanilla and icing sugar into a bowl and beat slowly with a handheld electric mixer. Soften the butter in a small saucepan and when it has just disintegrated pour the butter into the cream cheese mixture while beating slowly. Beat till you have a smooth consistency and use it straight away.

Sandwich the cakes together with some icing and then ice on top. Sprinkle the cake with chocolate flakes or pipe on chocolate ganache swirls.