SC#36 | Layered lemon and chocolate fudge cake

Mmmh, just typing up the title makes my mouth water. "Chocolate fudge" — there aren't many lovelier words than that. And look at this:



It was my friend Gamel's birthday the weekend before last, so I made him a cake. We used to work together, and Gamel's thing was stealing food. You would not be able to leave food unattended without it disappearing. I once brought in biscotti to prove the office I could actually bake (these were early days.) He devoured them all in about ten minutes. Long story short: he likes food.

This was also a sort of personal challenge. I've been on a massive cooking kick recently (more posts to come!) and wanted to get out of what I know. And I'd never made an iced layered cake before! So here goes.

I pretty much used this recipe from Love and Olive Oil, only cutting the icing by about half as (a) I only made two layers and (b) I had next to no butter and icing sugar left. Oopsie! I'd recommend keeping with the original proportions if you like a thick filling and icing, but half does nicely for thinner layers.

The cake was super moist and really nicely flavoured, and the icing was just the right amount of chocolate. I've always been big on chocolate + lemon (one of my favourite chocolate bar flavours) but Britain is used to orange being chocolate's citrus pairing. Well, friends, lemon is the way forward.

I unfortunately have no photos of the inside or my friends enjoying it, but the man did say it's the second best thing I've ever made (should I share no.1 soon...?), even topping my ultimate favourite cake recipe. That's one for the books... x