Chocolate Fudge Cake for £1

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Chocolate Fudge Cake – A rich, moist chocolate sponge smothered in glossy chocolate fudge icing guaranteed to satisfy any chocolate craving & all for just £1 ! Update, this was the cost back in May 2014.

Choclette over at Chocolate Log Blog has set a £1 cake challenge for this month’s We Should Cocoa to help raise awareness and money for the Live Below The Line Challenge – if you wish to, you can pop over and donate through her blog.

This was not an easy challenge – as we all know baking can be so expensive. I try to keep my baking bill as low as possible and I’m always on the lookout for offers, but even stocking up with ‘3 for 2’ offers and shopping around for value products I thought it would be difficult to come up with a £1 chocolate cake that would taste good and look appetising.

I already knew the ingredient costs for my chocolate yoghurt cake and thought if I halved the recipe and made a smaller cake in a 6 inch tin, I might have enough in the kitty for some decoration. I was just over the £1 mark, so I cut down by 10 grams on both sugars and used margarine and value chocolate instead of butter in the icing. The total came to 96½p, 3½p left to use up ! Enough for a touch of decoration, but what ? I weighed a square of chocolate ( it came in at 6 g but I’ve priced for 10 g in the recipe ) another 3 p, bringing the total to 99½p et voila my Chocolate Fudge Cake for £1.

The costings are based on Aldi prices, except for the cocoa powder and chocolate which are Tesco prices.

And if you fancy giving my Chocolate Fudge Cake a go, here it is in easily printable form…

5.0 from 1 reviews

Chocolate Fudge Cake for £1

 

Print

Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

50 mins

 

Chocolate Fudge Cake - A rich, moist chocolate sponge smothered in glossy chocolate fudge icing guaranteed to satisfy any chocolate craving & all for just £1 !

Author: Sarah James - Tales From The Kitchen Shed

Recipe type: Cake

Cuisine: Baking

Serves: 6 portions

Ingredients

Cake mixture

• 20 g cocoa powder ( save ½ teaspoon for dusting )
• 150 g plain flour
• 90 g granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee mixed with 1 tablespoon boiling water
• 2 eggs – beaten
• 100 ml vegetable oil
• 100 ml natural yoghurt

Chocolate fudge icing

• 20 g soft margarine
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 20 g dark chocolate
• 10 g cocoa powder
• 90 g icing sugar

Chocolate curls

• 10 g dark chocolate
• You will need 4 squares of baking parchment and sticky tape for the chocolate decoration.

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350℉ / 180℃ / Gas Mark 4 and grease and line a 6 inch round cake tin.

Make the cake.

1. Put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl and whisk together until combined.
2. Pour the batter into your baking tin.
3. Bake in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes until the sponge springs back when pressed.
4. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for at least 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Make the chocolate fudge icing.

1. Heat the margarine and chocolate in the milk until just melted,. For convenience, I use a bowl in the microwave for approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute.
2. Sieve the icing sugar and cocoa and add to the milk, margarine and chocolate mixture, whisking together until smooth.
3. Leave to cool.

Make the chocolate decoration>

1. Place melted chocolate on a square of parchment paper.
2. Place another square of parchment paper on top and squash into a thin layer of chocolate.
3. Peel apart – you will have chocolate on each of the two pieces of parchment. Cover each of your two chocolate shapes with another square of paper.
4. Roll up each of your chocolate shapes and fasten with sticky tape. For more details and photos on this technique see my white chocolate flowers tutorial.
5. Leave to set.
6. Remove the sticky tape from your chocolate rolls and unroll the parchment squares – the chocolate will break into curved pieces perfect for the top of your chocolate cake.

Decorate your chocolate cake.

1. Cover your chocolate cake with fudge icing, warming the icing a little if it has set too hard.
2. Scatter the chocolate rolls/flakes over the top of your iced cake.
3. Dust with the ½ teaspoon of saved cocoa powder.

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(I tried an experiment with just one square of chocolate on a square of parchment paper and placed it in the microwave on 10 second bursts to melt. I didn’t want to waste any chocolate! Would you believe it took a whole minute before it started to melt, I have a silicone chocolate melting pot I normally use but I wanted to be sure about the weight of the chocolate)

A note on eggs:

I priced for Aldi eggs, although I used eggs from my next door neighbour so they cost me less than Aldi prices. I’m very lucky to have access to free range eggs in return for a small donation to the chicken feed fund and for looking after the chucks when the neighbours go away. When I’m in the UK, I buy free range eggs from the farm in the next village for 14p each, which is a good saving on supermarket free range prices.

Pin my Chocolate Fudge Cake for later:

As well as the We Should Cocoa challenge for May, I’m also entering my Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe for:

• Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All‘s Credit Crunch Munch hosted by Gingey Bites this month.
• Family Foodies hosted alternately by Bangers & Mash and Eat Your Veg where the theme is Cheap and Cheerful.
• Made With Love Mondays where everything is made from scratch.