This is a good cake to keep lying around—for
roaming family members who need to be kept happy between mealtimes, for
neighbors who swoop in unannounced, for you.
It’s a chocolate cake that’s full of nuance and
personality, damp and puddinglike within, with caramel-crisp edges. Where most
loaf cakes are domed, sturdy, and evenly crumbed, this one is slumped and
squidgy (from the British, meaning “soft, spongy, and moist”).
That’s thanks to a generous amount of dark brown
sugar that arms the cake with loads of moisture. There is also the rather
unusual step of starting with creamed soft butter and brown sugar and ending
with spoonfuls of boiling water interspersed with leavened flour, making a
surprisingly runny batter. It is this creaming and partially melting process
that makes the final product resemble a cake, a steamed pudding, and a fudgy
brownie all at once.
It also causes this cake to collapse in a slightly
different way every time you bake it. Embrace it—it’s this collapse that gives
the cake its glorious denseness. If you’re concerned by the looks of it (Heidi Swanson nicknamed her spelt-based version “chocolate ugly
cake”), you can distract with crème fraîche, whipped cream, or cold cream
cheese, the way Lawson likes it.
Makes 8 to 10 slices
1 cup (225g) soft unsalted
butter
1⅔ cups (375g) packed dark brown
or dark muscovado sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon pure vanilla
extract
4 ounces (100g) best bittersweet
chocolate, melted
1⅓ cups (200g) all-purpose
flour
1 teaspoon baking
soda
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (250ml)
boiling water
1 Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Put a baking sheet
on a lower rack in case of sticky drips later. Grease a 9 by 5-inch (23 by 13cm)
loaf pan and line with parchment paper. The lining is important as this is a
very damp cake; use parchment paper or one of those loaf-pan-shaped paper
liners.
2 Cream the butter and brown sugar, either with a
wooden spoon or with an electric mixer, then add the eggs and vanilla, beating
in well. Next, fold in the melted and now slightly cooled chocolate, taking care
to blend well but being careful not to overbeat. You want the ingredients
combined. You don’t want a light, airy mass.
3 Mix the flour and baking soda and gently add the
flour mixture to the batter, alternately spoon by spoon with the boiling water
until you have a smooth and fairly liquid batter. Pour into the lined loaf pan.
(Note: Don’t let this batter come closer than 1 inch/2.5cm from the rim of the
loaf pan or it risks overflowing. Pour any excess into a smaller cake or muffin
pan.) Bake for 30 minutes.
4 Turn the oven down to 325°F (170°C) and continue to
bake for another 15 minutes. The cake will still be a bit squidgy inside, so an
inserted cake tester or skewer won’t come out completely clean.
5 Place the loaf pan on a rack and leave it to get
completely cold before turning it out. (Lawson often leaves it for a day or so;
like gingerbread, it improves.) Don’t worry if it sinks in the middle; indeed,
it will do so because it’s such a dense and damp cake.
0 التعليقات: