Hot Chocolate Fudge Cake – think of this as a sliceable version of Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding – with a LOT more chocolate fudge sauce! The perfect cosy dessert for cool winter days that’s easy to make.
Pouring chocolate sauce over Hot chocolate fudge cake
The chocolate cake of your dreams…
I know this is a great dessert for sweater weather. But holy moly. It’s so good, I’ll wager that after you’ve made it once, you’ll make it over and over again regardless of the weather.
Let me paint the picture for you. A warm slice of soft chocolate cake, moist in a way that cakes can only be when warm. A scoop of melty vanilla ice cream on top.
Then you douse – douse, my friends! – with hot chocolate fudge sauce. The ice cream starts to melt, and you get beautiful swirls of chocolate with white streaks pooling around your cake. You dig in with a spoon, getting a big scoop of cake soaked with the chocolate sauce and melted ice cream, and that first bite, that first glorious bite…..
Knees. WEAK.
Eating Hot chocolate fudge cake
Pouring chocolate sauce into jug for Hot chocolate fudge cakeThe hot chocolate fudge sauce for this cake
Hot chocolate fudge cakeThis fudgy chocolate cake is served hot
Did I mention how easy this Hot Chocolate Fudge Cake is to me? The batter is made in a single bowl with a wooden spoon. And that fudge sauce is 2 ingredients – just cream and chocolate.
Ingredients in Hot Chocolate Fudge Cake
Here’s what you need to make this winter dessert. The recipe is based on my classic Chocolate Cake, with some minor adjustments to make it suitable for serving hot as a single layer, unfrosted cake.
Dry ingredients for the warm chocolate cake
Hot chocolate fudge cake ingredients
Flour – Just plain / all-purpose flour. Self raising flour will also work but the cake crumb is not as soft. (Skip the baking soda and baking powder if you use self-raising flour).
Baking soda (bi-carb) and baking powder, or use more of either – Both of these makes cakes, muffins etc rise but work differently depending on what you’re making. Baking soda is also ~3x stronger than baking powder. I like using a combination of the two for this cake for a lovely tender crumb and nice shape to the surface of the cake. However, if you only have one or the other, you can use more of what you have. See recipe notes for quantities.
Cocoa powder – Just plain cocoa powder, unsweetened. Not dutch processed – though you can use it if you’ve got this more expensive, more intense type.
White sugar – Use caster sugar / superfine sugar if you’ve got it, because it’s finer so you can be confident it dissolves easily. Else ordinary white sugar / granulated sugar works ok too.
Salt – Just a pinch brings out the flavours in this cake, especially the chocolate. Fairly standard baking practice for me these days, adding a touch of salt for this purpose!
Wet ingredients
And here are the wet ingredients in this cake:
Hot chocolate fudge cake ingredients
Melted butter AND oil – Butter adds flavour into this cake while oil keeps the crumb fresh and moist for longer. Using both gives us the best of both worlds!
Egg – 1 large egg which means an egg that is sold in cartons labelled “large eggs” which is an industry standard. It is also best to be at room temperature – see this post for a quick way to do this.
Vanilla – For flavour, which compliments the chocolate.
Boiling water – Using hot rather than cold water makes the cocoa flavour “bloom” so the cake tastes more chocolatey. You’ll smell the chocolate the moment the hot water mixes into the batter!
No coffee? Some chocolate cakes include a touch of coffee which brings out the chocolate flavour. I tried it but it didn’t add anything to this cake because you get so much chocolate flavour from the hot fudge sauce!
