Chocolate Fudge Birthday Cake

A couple of weeks ago I went to a joint birthday party for two of my friends. I decided I would bake them a cake, and set about 'subtly' finding out their favourite. Basically I told them I was doing a 'straw poll for my blog' and asked what their favouite cake was. This is where my plan fell down Rowan said Chocolate Fudge and Dave said Victoria Sponge - so I ended up making two! Here's the first one:

Chocolate Fudge Cake

You will need:

200g caster sugar

200g butter, softened

4 eggs, beaten

200g self-raising flour (minus 2 tbsp)

2 tbsp cocoa (Green & Black's is best)

1tsp baking powder

2 tbsp milk

Step 1

Beat together the sugar and butter until light and creamy.

Step 2

Sift in the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Add the eggs and milk and mix until well combined.

Step 3

Divide the mixture between 2 greased 20cm cake tins.

Step 4

Bake in a 190°C/gas 6 preheated oven for about 20 minutes, until the cake springs back when lightly pressed. Transfer to wire racks to cool.

For the icing:

200ml double cream

50g butter

3 tbsp clear honey

200g dark chocolate (Green & Black's 70% is best)

Heat the cream until it just begins to boil. Take off the heat and add the honey, butter and chocolate (broken into pieces). Leave to melt for 5 minutes and then stir briefly to combine.

To assemble:

Place one of the cakes onto a cake stand and spread with some of the frosting.

Place the other on top, and then using the rest of the frosting cover the top and sides. Decorate if you want to - I used Smarties to make this 'R'.

The cake went down well at the party, there was a bit of death by chocolate about it...
The original Fudgy dark chocolate cake is from the BBC GoodFood website.