Chocolate Soured Cream Cake

For the cake, take a very large mixing bowl, put the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder in a sieve and sift it into the bowl, holding the sieve high to give it a good airing as it goes down.

Now all you do is simply add everything else to the bowl and beat together thoroughly with an electric hand whisk for about 1 minute till smooth. Then spoon the mixture into the 2 prepared sandwich tins, dividing it evenly, and bake them side by side in the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes. Then turn them straight out on to a wire rack to cool for about 5 minutes after they come out of the oven and carefully strip off the base papers.

Meanwhile, make the topping by breaking the chocolate into a heatproof basin fitted over a saucepan of barely simmering water (make sure the base doesn’t touch the water), add the soured cream too, and stir, keeping the heat very low, till the chocolate has melted and you have a smooth, creamy mixture. Then remove the bowl from the heat and, as soon as it’s cool, use half of the soured cream topping to sandwich the 2 cakes together and spread the rest over the top.

Decorate with nuts and store in an airtight tin. I think this one is nicest eaten as fresh as possible.