Macadamia fudge cake

For a bit of a rambling free-form afternoon dinner-ish party yesterday, which doubled up as a belated birthday party, both Jo and I made extremely rich chocolately cakes. Mine was this slightly ramshackle looking offering.

It’s my first slightly iffy experience with one of Dan Lepard’s Guardian recipes. They’re usually thoroughly reliable, but I’m a bit unsure about the results of this one, his Macadamia fudge cake.

I couldn’t resist trying out the recipe – 400g of macadamia nuts, ground up; half a kilo of dark choc. What’s not to like? However, I was a bit uncertain what to do when I tested it after 50 minutes of baking and the centre seemed to be pure goo, under a crisp, crusty top. Given that Dan L has limited space for his Guardian recipes, he put “bake for 45-55 minutes”, but nothing like “until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean”, or whatever equivalent would have been suitable here. Ergo, I was very uncertain about it. I gave it another 20 mins, but it was still gooey. I realise this one is supposed to be somewhat akin to good brownie in moistness, so I took it out. His recipe does say to leave it overnight too, so I thought it might firm up a bit.

Instead, it collapsed in on itself, which is never something a baker likes to see their cakes do. I get quite upset when my baking projects go so visibly wrong.

Anyway, rather than having a tantrum and throwing it in the bin, I just filled it with whipped cream before serving and hoped for the best. It was very tasty, but still very gooey. Today, almost two days after it, and after a night in the fridge, the remains have firmed up a bit, but I’m still a little unsure.

Basically, this recipe is like the bastard offspring of a sachertorte and a meringue. Which is all well and good theoretically, but, well, I’d love to see what Dan L’s version is like in the flesh! The brief (to date) discussion on Dan L’s forums includes one chap’s comments that indicate a not dissimilar experience to mine.