Chocolate Button Cake - Grown Up Style

Warning this is the richest chocolate cake on the blog so far! It started off as a little recipe experiment from a humble chocolate button cake but beware, this is a dark, dark, chocolate cake rather than the sweet confection you are all used to . Using lots of Green and Black's 70 % chocolate and topped off with dark Duchy Original Thins  on a whipped chocolate cream. Tempted?

Everyone loves chocolate buttons and chocolate cake and I guess that's why it's such a popular combination. However, there seemed to be an age limit on this so I've upscaled this for the adult palate.  I've kept the essentials; buttons and cake but added lots of real dark chocolate, alcohol and nuts and pretended to be grown up.

Text Only Printable Recipe

Ingredients :

Cake :

8oz (225g) Butter
8oz (225g) Golden caster sugar
1 tbsp Dark treacle
4 Large eggs

3oz (90g) Self raising flour
1oz (30g) of Dark cocoa powder
4oz (120g) Ground almonds

8 oz (225g)   Dark chocolate 70% – Green and Blacks - 2 bars and a bit

Topping:


¼ pint (150 ml) Double cream
3 ½ oz (100g) Dark chocolate 70% – Green and Blacks
1 tbsp  Port or liqueur or add flavouring to taste

Chocolate Thins to decorate or your favourite buttons – Duchy Originals





Method:

Preheat oven to a low temperature 120c/100c Fan/250F/Gas Mark 1/2 .

Grease and line two sandwich cake tins. I like using 8 inch (20 cm) square ones to shape the cake ready for cutting smaller squares for serving later.

Cream the sugar and butter together, add the treacle and whisk in. Whisk in the eggs one at a time. Fold in the flour and cocoa, and then fold in the ground almonds.  Melt the chocolate and combine well into the mix.

Divide into two cake sandwich tins. You can weigh each one to make sure you have the same weight of mixture in both, for two even bakes. Place in the centre of the oven. Check after 30 minutes, mine actually took 40 mins to cook. Cook until a skewer comes cleanly out and the sides of the cake are just coming away from the tin. Allow to cool and make topping. 

This cake is so rich it doesn’t really need a topping but just to go OTT, make this simple chocolate cream. Melt chocolate and in a separate bowl whisk the double cream until nearly thick. Add the cream to the melted chocolate one tbsp at a time and beat in. Add flavouring to taste. Spread onto both cakes. Allow to set slightly before putting on buttons.

 

Just to prove I’m not  mean or a snob; I made one cake without a liqueur in the chocolate cream and put milk chocolate buttons on it for my children but then, they wanted  giant buttons as well, who wouldn’t?



Options

However, I think the giant buttons do make it look quite special and I used Duchy Originals Dark Chocolate Thins . You can vary this by adding the liqueur of your choice to the chocolate cream or simply orange juice or mint flavouring to go with the other Duchy Thins in the range shown on the link. They are available online or from Waitrose.They have a nice design on the back which you could also use as a decoration.

If you can't source these products, look for good quality dark chocolate with 70% cocoa mass. Happy Hunting!