Chocolate cake comes in many different guises: from the dark and rich, to the sweet and simple. For me, it’s not like the ultimate cookie, or the perfect brownie: I don’t believe that there is one, definitive chocolate cake. I do not spend my days searching for the platonic version; trying to rank a chocolate fudge cake above or below a a cream-filled Yule log or a chocolate chunk-studded, plain loaf cake is like comparing apples and oranges.
I think, instead, that there is a perfect chocolate cake for every mood. For a party, I want something crowd-pleasing, sweet and tender, with old-fashioned milk chocolate icing; it must cut cleanly, and not crumble. If it’s mid-morning, and I’m already thinking about chocolate cake, it’s probably a dinky little Swiss roll, one of those kid sized ones that comes individually wrapped, and sits in my cupboard, just waiting for its rightful place, next to my 11 o’clock coffee.
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