Chocolate raspberry and blackcurrant cake

This one is my take on Nigella Lawson's Storecupboard Chocolate Orange Cake (which sadly isn't on her website yet) from How to be a Domestic Goddess. I've made this cake many times in its original format - that is, with bitter marmalade and in an 8" round cake tin and it truly is delicious. However, the last time I made it, I decided that delicious though it was, I wanted to try something a little less bitter. She suggests variations at the end of the recipe, including replacing the marmalade with raspberry jam, which sounded perfect. However, as is the way of things, I had insufficient raspberry jam, but had just opened a jar of blackcurrant (see also, Jaffa Cakes!!!) so I decided on a mix of the two. This was a good plan and worked well!!!

Lovely sticky top and bursts of blackcurrant flavour make this an absolute winner!

Chocolate raspberry and blackcurrant cake

Ingredients

125g butter
100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces (I used Lindt 70%)
150g good raspberry jam
100g good blackcurrant jam
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self raising flour

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a tin. I used a 7" square tin this time, but the recipe specifies an 8" round.
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan (the saucepan is your mixing bowl and will have to take all the other ingredients).
- When it is melted, add the chopped chocolate and leave until starting to melt. Stir the chocolate until completely melted. Add the jams and sugar and stir well until smooth and amalgamated. Add the eggs and stir again to combine.
- Add the flour and beat in until smooth.
- Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 50 minutes, although mine always takes about an hour. It's a good idea to cover the cake with foil for the last 20-30 minutes or so (i.e. cover after about 30 mins of cooking) as I find the top gets very dark and erm... caramelised. OK then, burnt. It never really tastes burnt though, just slightly bitter, and as this cake has a bitter tang when made with marmalade anyway, it never seems to matter.

- Remove cake from oven and allow to cool on a wire baking rack.

I don't bother with any decoration - this is a cake that doesn't seem to need fancy-ing up at all. Just enjoy it how it is.

The other thing I love about this cake is just how easy it is to make - just melt some butter and chocolate and stir the rest of the ingredients into it. The most time consuming bit is probably lining the tin!

I loved this cake, as did my colleagues, but because I loved it so much, they got rather less of it than they might have done! One of the things I like most about it is that it's almost brownie-like in texture - really dense and sticky and chewy (I suppose that's down to the quantity of sugar in the recipe) and the contrast between the sticky top and the dense cake is divine. I also loved the way that you could tast the raspberries and blackcurrants against the chocolate, and the little bursts of blackcurrant from the jam. The bitter chocolate (70%) perfectly offset the sweetness from the jam and sugar. I will be making this again (can you tell I'm really keen on it?!?), but next time I might use all blackcurrant jam.

It all disappeared pretty quickly at work, with even those on diets succumbing to a piece before the day was over!