Quadruple chocolate loaf cake!

I was in a bit of a pickle on Friday night. I was to have my last French class of the term the following day, so we were all supposed to bring in a plate of food/drinks. I think since after highschool, whenever I'm asked to bring a plate of food, I automatically associate that with homemade food, mostly in the form of some delicious baked sweet treat. Anyway. I've been preoccupied the whole week with random things, (okay, I'll admit I've been online shopping again, as well as doing that final bit of research before buying a new ultrabook with ivy bridge that I was waiting so long to become available here (and yes, I am using it now - hooray! No more pinching other people's laptops to use!)), so basically, I forgot all about it until Friday afternoon. My plan of action was to bake a batch of my favourite cookies - that is, pecan, chocolate and cranberry oat cookies from Nigella's Feast cookbook - when I got home after work that night, since cookies are the most effortless things to make (minus all the chopping of ingredients involved).

Come 11pm, I look in the larder and gasped in disbelief - there were NO OATS LEFT! There was maybe like 2 tbsp of it left from last time, which is obviously not enough. In panic mode, I reached for my trusty copy of Feast in hope to find another low-effort cookie recipe, which I would have the ingredients for. I was unsuccessful in that arena, but flipped to the chocolate cake chapter and had an "a-ha!" moment when I remembered how well the Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake turned out last time. It was dark, very chocolatey, lusciously moist, and, did I say chocolatey already? It probably sounds a bit funny when I say it's dark, because it's a chocolate cake and would obviously be dark-coloured; but, you know how some chocolate cakes end up a light brown or just a normal brown colour? Well, this one was an intense dark chocolate colour, like mudcake; like as though real chocolate was mixed into the batter. I think I used Nestle baking cocoa last time (I prefer Green and Black's chocolate, which I did use and do still use in everything calling for chocolate, but I found that its brand of cocoa produces a rather lighter brown colour in the resulting cake), but this time I used the Henry Langdon brand of dutched cocoa powder, which I bought from a gourmet food store in Melbourne. I was a bit worried about the colour it would produce, since I've never used this cocoa before, but it turned out wonderfully well, and imparted a deliciously chocolate flavour. It would have been awful if it disappointed, because I think I spent quite a bit of money on it. I had all the ingredients required for this recipe, except for the sour cream, which I ended up substituting with thickened cream, hoping that it wouldn't make too much of a difference.

I stayed up til about 1ish to prep all the ingredients (measuring, chopping, etc), and set my alarm clock for 6am.

Of course I ended up pressing snooze at least twice, but it looked like the sun had just woken up too.

I got on it straight away, still sleepy-eyed.

In the recipe, Nigella says to bake the cake for about an hour. I noted down last time that it actually took 1hr 18 minutes to cook (maybe the pan she used was a wee bit larger?), so I checked every 5 minutes or so after the hour was up to test for doneness. I think it ended up taking even a little bit longer than the 1'18''. It was still a bit sticky in one little spot that I tested, but it is a damp cake and Nigella said it was to be expected. I love her conversational style of instructions!

Done! Look at the intensity of that colour. I must have taken this photo after pouring over the chocolate syrup, because the surface appears so glossy.

There's little holes all over the top from pricking all over with a cake tester, to allow the syrup to seep into the cake evenly.

It must have sat there in its pan on the cooling rack for at least 15 minutes or more, while I madly rushed to finish the rest of my French homework and get ready for class that morning. Needless to say, it wasn't sufficient time for the dense, damp cake to cool completely and it was still steaming and burning my hands when I transferred the sliced cake to the container (didn't want to bring a knife with me to class and to shopping after!). You also have to exercise caution when transferring this cake, especially when in cut slices, because it breaks apart easily, due to its tender moistness (especially when it's still hot!). The pricking through with the cake tester possibly also contributes to its fragility, particularly if you do it in the way I did it - I think the above photo explains it all! The chocolate splinters didn't completely melt onto the surface of the cake this time though, which was good. A taste test proved that using thickened cream produced just as delicious a result as the sour cream. This was definitely good news, because I hardly use sour cream unless I'm using a particular recipe that calls for it, but I almost always buy thickened cream to have as a standby in the fridge, when I plan to improvise random dishes during the week.

All sliced and boxed, with the final sprinkling of the grated chocolate topping added! I used Lindt Dessert 70% dark specialty cooking chocolate for this, because I wanted to emphasise the cake's chocolateyness with its lovely dark colour. And yes, it does taste as amazing as it looks!

I took this photo with the flash. It makes the colours look less accurate somewhat, but it shows better definition, so I thought I'd throw this in as well.

The whole house was filled with chocolate aroma and, since I had to keep the lid off the container in the car, because the cake was still emitting quite a bit of steam, the car was also filled with the strong smell, such that I started to feel quite nauseated! I love the smell of chocolate, but not when I'm hungry from not having breakfast in the morning and from lack of sleep. By the time I got to class, I felt so sick that I was just totally over it, especially since by which point the cake was STILL steaming hot and the aroma was STILL wafting out of the open container, distracting my neighbour (but unlike for me, in a positive way). It was very nice how most of my classmates made an effort to hand-make their plates of food too. Most were sweet though, so there were plenty of left overs! It was a very big compliment when the aforementioned neighbour requested to take some of my cake home. I ended up getting the others to take home the remainder.
I love making chocolate cakes, but the truth is that although I like to eat the occasional little bit of chocolate cake (but only if it's very richly chocolately and delicious, like this particular cake), I'm not actually really a big fan of chocolate cakes and desserts in general. I love eating chocolate out of hand, but it's just not quite the same in baked form for me. Similarly, my family also has this sort of relationship with chocolate, which is why I don't often make chocolate cakes at all. Everyone else I know seems to adore it though!