Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Fudge Cake

Ripped from Nigella Bites, one of Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, this sinfully rich chocolate cake, is really sinful. Not only it's swimming in butter, oil, AND sour cream, the icing is ALSO ludicrously unhealthy, in its original form. Therefore I have taken the liberty of substituting the prescribed icing with a chocolate ganache, which at least omits the tons of butter and icing sugar. Though I've made it twice, once with the original icing, and the second time with the ganache, I've only eaten it the first time, and didn't get around to actually eating it the second time round, so I have no idea if it's any good, and only have the wife's word for it that it is okay.

What Goes In

Dry Ingredients to be sifted
3 1/5th cups plain flour
50gm cocoa powder (3/4 cup)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

Sugars
1 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar

Cream & Egg Mix
3 eggs
tub sour cream
1 tbspn vanilla extract

Lubricants
175gm butter, pref unsalted
½ cup corn oil
300ml cold water

Icing
Ganache
250gm dark chocolate
1/3 cup cream

OR

Original recipe
175gm dark choc
250gm unsalted butter
275gm icing sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to moderate, ie, about 170C, or mark 5 on the electrolux. Line two 8" sandwich pans. I don't know why they're called that, coz you don't make bread in them. I guess cakes in these kinda pans usually are used to sandwich something.

2. Sift the "sifting ingredients" and sugars into a big bowl. You can also try using brown sugar throughout, especially if you buy into the common belief that brown sugar is healthier.

3. In a separate bowl, or jug, whisk the egg cream combo until it resembles just that. Egg and cream combo. Ie, you can no longer tell the yolk from the albumin, etc.

4. In yet another separate bowl, (this is when having domestic help, or dishwasher comes in handy), mix the butter, oil, and water....yeah, I know, I thought it was weird too, who ever hears of mixing oil and water. The outcome would be two stratified layers, or oil and water. But don't despair. The cooking diva knows what she was talking about.

5. Chuck everything into the big bowl where the dry ingredients are sitting. Beat (with electric mixer) until its all nicely mixed and looks like a chocolate cake batter.

6. Divide into the two sandwich tins, and bake for about 25-30 minutes. I'm not sure if you're meant to leave it to cool in the pan, or on a wire rack, so to be safe, just do a bit of both....

7. For the ganache, zap ingredients in microwave for a minute, letting the choc melt.

8. Place a healthy dollop in between the cakes, and the rest to ice the rest of the cooled cake.

9. If opting for the sickly rich butter icing, melt the chocolate. Cream the butter and icing, and add the melted chocolate until it forms a nice spreadable icing.

10. Serve at room temperature I suppose. According to Nigella, if you're heartbroken, you can eat the whole cake.