Soured cream double chocolate cranberry ring

Mmm, I realised after I wrote the title that there's no way of you knowing that this cake was originally in ring form! I promise that I did make it in my bundt tin, and it was circular once upon a time. I was sort of intending this cake to be my birthday cake, but then it didn't really turn out as well as I had hoped and I ran out of time to do any sort of decoration, so it was just another cake... Well, another pretty tasty cake that also used up the tub of soured cream that needed using.

I'm pretty sure that I've made this Nigella recipe before, in fact I know I certainly have in pre-blogging days, but I'm not sure about recently. The last time I made it I stuck to the recipe exactly, made it in two 8" tins and decorated it with buttercream. Yum! I made it as a leaving present for some colleagues many, many years ago, in the first job I had after I left university. In a workplace where everything was either 'grins' or 'doom' this cake was definitely grins!!!

Time has moved on though, and I'm more confident (rightly or wrongly) in playing about with recipes - adding ingredients, changing tin size... and luckily it worked ok this time round! My additions were chopped white chocolate and cranberries. I like bundt tins - they tend to cook evenly in my (limited) experience, and there's no centre to undercook! I'd love this one! The other good thing is that if you misjudge a recipe and most of your add-ins fall to the bottom, it becomes the top of the turned out cake! The only problem then becomes if the add-ins stick to the tin and rip your cake apart as you gently try and get it out..... (looks away in an embarrassed fashion....)

Nigella's Soured Cream Chocolate Cake, with C's additions
Ingredients
200g plain flour
200g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
40g best quality cocoa powder
175g butter, very soft
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
150ml soured cream
60g white chocolate, chopped
85g dried cranberries

Method

- Grease your bundt tin. I'm not really sure how to give sizes because I don't know the capacity of it, but if it's any help the diameter across the top is 9"/23cm with a 3"/7cm middle bit... I also added four little strips of baking parchment to help aid the cake out. I was glad I had done, and sorry I hadn't taken the time to line it better.

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C.

- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the remaining ingredients except the white chocolate and cranberries and beat until smooth.

- Fold in the white chocolate and cranberries and spoon into the bundt tin.

- Bake for 40-45 minutes until a cake tester/wooden cocktail stick comes out clean.

- Allow to cool for a little in the tin then turn out onto a wire rack.

I had to scoop the bits stuck in the tin onto the corresponding place on the cake and hoped that no-one noticed. I don't think they did. Anyway, it's chocolate cake, who really cares how it looks! I took this cake to colleagues in a different department. I haven't taken them cake in a while now, and when I put this one down at 11am I then went off to do some odds and sods. When I went past at 11.30 two small pieces remained.... the fastest moving cake I've ever seen!

It was a lot more moist than I remember it, very buttery and rich yet light too in an odd way. Nicely chocolatey. I guess this is why Nigella uses it for her old fashioned chocolate cake recipe. It's fairly delicate, but partly because of the add ins I used, which made it a little difficult to pick up a piece without the top portion dropping off, oh wait, that's because I sneakily tried to pretend it hadn't got stuck to the tin as you can just make out below ;-)