Simple Double Chocolate Tray Bake

Baking is an incredibly sensory experience which children tend to love, whatever their age and this simple tray bake tastes great, is easy to make and offers a great activity you can share with your child or children.

My daughter is a mere 17 months, yet she enjoyed mixing, sieving, pouring the cake batter into the cake tin and, yes of course she licked the bowl afterwards.

Obviously keep the children away from the boiling water and the hot oven!

You could have it plain, or add the white chocolate cream cheese icing as I did here.

Simple Double Chocolate Tray Bake

Here's how:

• Sponge recipe:
• 50g Cocoa powder (I use Cadbury’s Bournville)
• 6 tbsp boiling water
• 100g butter
• 270g caster sugar
• 175g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 125ml milk
• 3 large eggs

Icing:

• 200g white chocolate
• Drop vanilla essence
• 3 squares milk chocolate
• 150g cream cheese (Philadelphia is good)

Firstly grease a baking tin and line with baking paper and pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees.

Now sieve the cocoa into a small bowl and pour in the boiled water, stirring straight away to make a paste.

Add the butter next and beat till smooth, then add the sugar and flour and do the same again, then beat the eggs in, one at a time.

You should by now have a silky molten looking cake batter. Pour this into the cake tin and move the tin around to ensure it is evenly distributed.

Now bake for 30-35 minutes or till well risen and cooked through. If pierced with a skewer, it should come out dry.

Remove from the tin and allow to cool for thirty minutes.

In the meantime, use 3 squares of the white chocolate and the three squares of milk chocolate and grate for decoration, set aside.

Now melt the remaining white chocolate above some boiling water in a bowl until silky and rich.

Now add the Philadelphia and stir through with the vanilla essence.

Spoon onto the cake and use a palette knife to spread evenly. Finally scatter over the grated chocolate and cut into even squares. Enjoy!

Bridget loving baking!

Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

Love her or loathe her, Nigella Lawson's cookery books and TV shows always provide me with at least a couple of dishes that I end up making time and time again. In her latest book, Nigellissima, my new fail-safe recipe is a flour and butter-free chocolate cake. The flour is replaced with ground almonds and the butter with olive oil and I originally made this to try out for my friend Steph who has recently discovered she is gluten intollerant. I've since made it three times as it's bloody good.

The edges end up a little crusty and crumbly and the centre is really delicious, rich and moist - more like a pudding than a cut and keep cake, yet it lasts for up to a week and remains just as moist for that long.

150ml regular olive oil

50g good quality cocoa (I use Green & Black's)

125ml boiling water

2 tsp vanilla extract

150g ground almonds

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Pinch of sal

200g caster sugar

3 eggs

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees and grease and line a 23cm spring form tin.

Sift the cocoa into a small bowl and whisk in the boiling water till you have a smooth, chocolatey paste that's still slightly runny. Whisk in the vanilla extract and set aside to cool a little.

In a different bowl combine the ground almonds with the bicarb and salt.

(Nigella advises using a an electric mixer for this next step but I don't have such a luxury and so stick to the old fashioned method). Beat together the eggs, sugar and olive oil vigourously for about five minutes until you are left with a pale, aerated and thickened mixture.

Continue beating and slowly add the chocolate paste until it's all mixed in then finally fold in the almond mixture until all combined.

Pour into the tin and bake for 40-45 minutes. A knife or skewer should come out mostly clean, with the odd sticky crumb.

Allow to cool a little before turning out of the tin and then sift over a tiny bit of icing sugar if you fancy.

As I said this is a really lovely, rich yet moist cake, but as with all baked things, can be greatly improved with a big dollop of cream. Enjoy!