I was looking forward to a visit from my Aunt Lil, who was keen to meet my son Maksim, the newest addition to our family. I have always appreciated her accurate advice and outlook on family life, mothering, and managing a work-life balance which she has shared with me over the years with a good dose of practicality and humour. 

I’m all for welcoming a visitor with a home cooked cake or similar sweet teat to share over coffee and tea with good conversation. Being sleep deprived due to night feeds for my newborn, I also needed to be practical so something satisfying yet also simple was required. This is where my reliable Magimix food processor made an appearance. Within 10 minutes I had whizzed up a Cleverly Quick Chocolate Kugelhopf Cake, popped it into the oven and was on my way to eating an omelette for breakfast that my mother had made for me in the meantime. Mum is adamant about the restorative properties of eggs and a decent breakfast in general, especially after giving birth

This recipe is based on Nigella’s Lawson’s Traditional Chocolate Cake  (also referred to as a Chocolate Sour Cream Cake) from her Feast cookbook. I posted the recipe on the 31st August when I made it as the decadent, icing and strawberry-filled base for my daughter’s 12th birthday cake. 

This time I was using a deep, decorative kugelhopf tin and so I needed to increase the density and moisture content of the mixture, to ensure the resulting cake held its form and didn’t dry out. To achieve this I added an extra egg, sour cream, cocoa and also additional baking powder for lightness.  The finished product had the desired result with great substance and flavour. This cake cuts beautifully and is ideal as a lunch box treat because it doesn’t crumble with each bite. 

Cleverly Quick Chocolate Kugelhopf Cake

Ingredients (* this symbol represents changes to Nigella’s original recipe to suit a kugelhopf tin)
175 g unsalted butter melted in the microwave
200 g caster sugar
*3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
*200 ml full fat sour cream
200 g plain flour
*2 heaped teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
*50 g good quality cocoa (I use Cadbury Cocoa, readily available from supermarkets)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on a conventional setting and grease (with a liberal amount of melted butter), a deep, non-stick kugelhopf tin with a 20cm diametre. 

USING A FOOD PROCESSOR – Put all the other ingredients into the bowl of the food processor and blend until there is a thick, smooth chocolate coloured batter. You will need to stop the machine halfway through blending to scrape down the mixture from the sides to ensure everything is well combined.

Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and place into your oven for 45 minutes. The cake is ready when a skewer inserted into the middle of the mixture comes out cleanly and the cake has shrunk slightly away from the sides of the tin.  

Cool in the tins for  at least 10 minutes then turn out on a cake rack to cool completely before dusting with icing serving.