Chocolate Chunk Traybake with Fudgy Chocolate Icing

A large, yet easy to make cake to feed many hungry people...


Chocolate Chunk Traybake with Fudgy Chocolate Icing
Ingredients
225g butter
110g caster sugar
110g light muscovado sugar
splash vanilla extract
4 medium eggs
210g self raising flour
25g cocoa powder
150g 70% chocolate, chopped into chunks (I used Green and Blacks)

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and line a traybake tin (8x12") with parchment paper.

- Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.

- Add the vanilla, eggs, flour and cocoa powder and mix together until everything is well incorporated.

- Stir in the chocolate chunks.

- Spoon into the tin and level out. Bake for 35-40 minutes until well risen and a cake tester comes out clean.

- Leave to cool in the tin a little.

- Very carefully turn out. I wasn't careful enough and mine broke up into three large slabs. This isn't the end of the world though, because the delicious fudgy frosting will glue it back together!!!

Fudgy Chocolate Icing
250g dark chocolate (150g)
125g butter (75g)
200g icing sugar (120g)
5tbsp milk (3tbsp)
Bag of Twirl bites

- Melt the chocolate and butter over a pan of hot/simmering water.

- Remove from the heat, stir and beat in the sugar and milk until well mixed.

- Leave to cool until a spreadable consistency, then spread over the cake.

- Decide how many pieces you are going to cut the cake into and then mentally mark it out. Place a Twirl bite in the centre of each piece, then cut up before eating!

I have made a similar icing to this before, but was reminded of it when I came across the Hungry Hinny's post on her fabulous Chocolate Bunny cake and realised that this icing was just what I needed for this cake. It's a lush, fudgy chocolatey icing - just perfect and lovely to work with too. As you can see from the date on the Hungry Hinny's post I made this cake a while ago (I hadn't actually realised it was that long ago!) and I recall not making quite as much as the full recipe. I think I scaled it down to 3/5 of the amount specified and have put these amounts in brackets. If this is the amount I made, it still provided a generous covering for my cake, and a little extra for the baker!

This cake was lovely, lovely! I do so enjoy a cake with chunks of chocolate in it and the fudgy icing was just the right choice too. It's very reminiscent of something my mum used to make in quantity (vast, vast quantity) for our cake stalls when my brother and I were much younger. She used to make about 120 little chocolate buns (there were no cupcakes in the days of my childhood - you had buns or fairy cakes!) spread them with Cadbury's chocolate (the height of sophistication in the 80s when all the other mums were using Scotbloc chocolate flavoured cake covering) and then top them with a little piece of Cadbury's flake. They were always immensely popular on the school fete cake stall - often manned by my mum as a stalwart of the PTA. I like to think of this traybake as a posher version of my mum's chocolate buns - it has a richer cake base with the inclusion of light muscovado sugar, and all that delicious dark chocolate with a luscious icing too, but then harks back to my childhood with the topping of a Twirl bite - essentially just a tiny bit of flake covered in chocolate.

I think this would be perfect for a cake stall so am sending it to Karen of Lavender and Lovage for her Tea Time Treats Challenge, which this month is all about Cake Stall Bakes. TTT is co-hosted by Kate of What Kate Baked.