Maida Heatter's Kansas City Chocolate Dream Cake

A community recipe by gastrohoover

Not tested or verified by Nigella.com

Introduction

Like Nigella's Chocolate, Chilli, Cinammon Pudding in Feast, this is a dessert that comes with a ready-made sauce. But this is more of an upside down cake than a pudding. You'll see.

Ingredients

Serves: 0

For the Cake

4 tablespoons sifted unsweetened cocoa
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 pinch of salt
1½ cups granulated sugar
1½ cups milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 ounces melted unsalted butter
1 cup walnut pieces (or pecans)

For the Sauce/Topping

⅔ cup granulated sugar
12 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 cup soft dark brown sugar
4 teaspoons instant coffee
2 cups water

Method

Maida Heatter's Kansas City Chocolate Dream Cake is a community recipe submitted by gastrohoover and has not been tested by Nigella.com so we are not able to answer questions regarding this recipe.

Cake

Throw all the cake ingredients into a big mixing bowl, adding the melted butter last and mix thoroughly with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. This will come together in a thick sugary batter.

Spoon this batter into a greased cake tin (square or round, no smaller than 25-30cm in diameter and at least two inches deep. There's a lot of sauce. And please don't use a springform/loose bottom tin!) Smooth top and set aside.

Sauce

Throw all the sauce ingredients into a saucepan and place over low heat. Stir, making sure sugars, unsweetened cocoa and coffee dissolve properly and bring just to the boil and simmer for a minute.

Take off the heat, and while hot, pour this sauce evenly and gently over the cake batter. It will come up close to the top of the sides of the tin. Don't panic, keep pouring until it's fully flooded. Then carefully place this into the middle rung of a preheated oven (say 180 Celsius) and cook for 45 minutes to an hour.

It will have a cakey consistency when you take it out of the oven, and unlike a pudding, which you spoon out into bowls with the sauce at the bottom, you invert this onto a cake plate and serve it like a cake except that it comes covered (slathered) with a ready made choc/caramel sauce-cum-glaze.

I never let it cool. Once it comes out of the oven, I invert it directly onto a platter, and start cutting it into wedges, squares, whatever, while hot.

Additional Information

I've served it with banana or vanilla or strawberry ice cream. It feeds a dinner party of ten or twelve. Any leftovers can be kept in the fridge and reheated in the microwave, but it cannot be frozen. Variation: I served this to an American couple who recognized it instantly. Her variation was to add a cup of chopped dark chocolate or chocolate buttons to the cake batter, for extra choc. His variation was to grate the rind of a whole orange into the cake batter and then add a slug of Grand Marnier to the sauce.