Charlotte's chocolate mud cake

Trust me, this mix rises beautifully and the cake keeps really well... if you can bear to keep it!

This is Charlotte White from Restoration Cake's go-to chocolate cake recipe and she hopes that it will become yours too. The mixture is more like a liquid batter that needs to be poured into your cake tins.

You can use this cake as a base to make glamorous ganache and Miss Cherry Shakewell

(Makes one 8” cake)

Ingredients:

220g dark chocolate220g unsalted butter6tsp instant coffee160ml water125g plain flour125g self-raising flour40g cocoa powder½ tsp bicarbonate of sodaPinch of salt480g caster sugar4 large eggs7tsp vegetable oil110ml buttermilk

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 160C / 325F / Gas Mark 3

• Melt the chocolate and the butter in a small saucepan with the instant coffee granules and water. Keep the temperature low and turn off the heat when only a few small lumps remain – these will melt in the heat of the mixture and turning the heat off early prevents burning.

• Weigh the flours, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and sugar into a bowl with a pinch of salt. Make a small well in the centre and set aside.

• Beat the eggs, oil and buttermilk together in a jug before tipping this mixture into the dry ingredients and stirring it into a thick paste

• Pour the melted chocolate and butter mixture on top of this paste and bring everything together with a wooden spoon until you have one glossy mixture in the bowl

• The cake mixture will need to be poured into two lined sandwich tins. This then goes into the oven for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean (or with only a few tiny crumbs attached to it). Allow the cake to cool completely in its tins.

Make your mud cake into a Miss Cherry Shakewell cake

From Deliciously Decorated by Charlotte White