Quadruple Chocolate Cake was served up after our easy, tasty dinner of barbecued beef patties with cumin and oregano, cinnamon rice, char-grilled capsicum and crisp cucumbers and juicy tomatoes with verjuice. 


There were five generously sized, foil wrapped, chocolate Santa figurines that my children had received as an early Christmas gift. I used the word “were” because they are no longer neatly wrapped in festive foil, nor are they whole. In fact, each one is missing a hat, a head and torso. It wasn’t hard to track down the culprit. All I had to do was look for the tell-tale signs of a chocolate stained mouth. My four year old son Luka, had been nibbling with gusto not only on his Santa chocolate, but on those belonging to his older siblings. I’m not surprised he refused a slice of this Quadruple Chocolate Cake, citing a sore tummy as the reason. 

If you enjoy eating a very moist, very smooth, very chocolaty type of cake, then I recommend you try this recipe. It is from Nigella Lawson’s cookbook, Feast. Now aside from her rather messy personal life which unfortunately seems to be spent inside a courtroom of late, Nigella really does have an impressive variety of reliable, manageable and delicious recipes perfect for the home cook. I have never had a Nigella recipe flop. Never. And this one is no exception. The only change I made to her instructions was to use a round 23 cm cake tin instead of a loaf tin because I wanted to serve the cake on my favourite plates – a well used Mikasa bone china dinner plate (one of only 2) that remains from an original set that I purchased with my very first pay check more than 20 years ago. I only ever use it for cake presentations because the glaze is now so fragile that I couldn’t bear to have this one break. 

Quadruple Chocolate Cake serves 12 people

Ingredients for the cake
200 g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
50 g cocoa
275 g caster sugar
175 g soft unsalted butter – remove from the fridge prior to starting the recipe so that it softens at room temperature.
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
80 ml sour cream
125 ml boiling water
175 g dark chocolate chips

Ingredients for the chocolate syrup
1 teaspoon cocoa
125 ml water
100 g caster sugar
25 g chocolate – either dark or milk chocolate bar

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees on a conventional setting. Grease and line your baking tin – either a 23 cm round springform tin or a 900 g loaf tin measuring 21 cm x 11 cm and about 7 cm deep. 

Put all of the ingredients, with the exception of the boiling water and chocolate chips, into a food processor or mixing bowl and beat until completely combined and you have a thick, smooth, satin-like texture. Reduce the speed of the mixer or food processor and slowly pour in the boiling water. Beat until well combined. 

Add the chocolate chips and fold through with a spatula. Scrape into your prepared tin, avoiding the temptation to eat the batter raw which by the way smells divine! Bake for 60 minutes. It is ready when the top of the cake springs back when pressed gently. The cake should also have come away from the sides of the tin. This is a sticky mixture, so a cake tester inserted into the middle of the cake will come out coated in moist chocolate cake crumbs. 

For the syrup, start this about 10 minutes before the cake comes out of the oven. Simply combine all the ingredients with the exception of the chocolate bar, in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil over a low heat, then stir for about 2 minutes until the syrup thickens. 

Using a skewer, pierce holes over the top of the cooked cake as soon as it comes out of the oven. Pour the syrup evenly over the surface. Wait until the cake is completely cool before taking it out of the tin. Use a vegetable peeler to shave the chocolate bar into thin fragments all over the cake. This is a decadent way of finishing off a meal. A dessert that really can be made with a minimum of fuss and eaten with a maximum amount of enjoyment.