I had a very stressful few weeks a while back and I decided to give in to my craving for chocolate cake and take it as an opportunity to find a really great recipe. I wasn’t going to be happy with just a chocolate cake, I wanted a deliciously rich and moist chocolate cake. This recipe totally achieved that!

I used this recipe as the basis for my cake but I removed a lot of the sugar and the ganache frosting and added chocolate chips instead.

Ingredients:

• 350ml milk (I use lactaid milk because I’m lactose intolerant)
• 4oz butter
• 50ml hazelnut oil (tasteless oil or a flavor of your choice will also work fine)
• 2oz cocoa powder
• 5oz self-raising flour
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp baking soda (baking powder will work if necessary)
• 5oz sugar
• 4oz chocolate chips

Heat together the milk, butter, oil and cocoa powder in a pan until the butter melts then allow it to cool to room temperature. While it cools, preheat the oven to 180C or 350F. Beat the egg and add it, along with the flour, baking soda and sugar, to the cooled wet ingredients. Beat the mixture well with a whisk and then add the chocolate chips. (I added the chocolate chips first, as you can see, which made beating the mixture much more difficult!) Bake for 25-30 minutes or 15-20 if you want to make individual cupcakes.

If you eat a slice while it’s still warm from the oven, the chocolate chips melt as you bite into them. The cake is pretty crumbly but that’s because it’s so moist it almost falls apart. A little mess is definitely worth it, though!