Chocolate Fudge Cake Recipe - Moist Gooey Chocolate Cake Recipe

How to make chocolate fudge cake - Sometimes, you just want a chocolate cake that's dense and rich. Maybe because you want to warm it up a bit and serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Or chocolate ice cream if you are evil!

Sometimes you want to bake up something in your small ring cake mould that can only hold 1.5 cups of batter, so that you get cute pieces like these. And sometimes you want to pack them up for guests when they leave - an extra treat for taking the trouble to visit you.

This cake has lesser amount of flour and more of chocolate goodness, so it bakes up rich and dense and fudgy. You can also bake the batter into cute little gooey chocolate hearts for Valentines Day. If you love chocolate desserts, then check out this easy steamed chocolate cake, vegan chocolate avocado cupcakes, 1-minute chocolate chip cookie in microwave, and decadent chewy chocolate brownies.

Chocolate Fudge Cake
Makes 15 small pieces

Ingredients:
All purpose flour / plain flour - 1/2 cup
Bittersweet chocolate, chopped - 125 gm / 4.5 oz
Cocoa powder - 1 heaping tbsp
Powdered sugar - 75 gm or 6 tbsp
Unsalted butter - 135 gm / 1/2 cup and a bit more
Eggs - 4 large ( I used 3 eggs and 2 tbsp yogurt)
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
A pinch of salt
Butter - to grease
Icing sugar - to dust

How to make Chocolate Fudge Cake:

1. Sieve together cocoa powder, flour, salt and the baking powder. I did it about thrice so that the three are blended well. You can also add them to a bowl and mix well with a fork, if are feeling lazy.

2. Preheat oven to 180C.

3. Place the chopped chocolate and butter in a bowl. Get another bowl that's about double the size of the first one, fill 1/4 of the way with water and bring to boil. Once the water boils, lower fire, set the first bowl in the water without touching the sides and keep stirring the choc-butter mixture until it melts.

If all of that was just too much, place the butter and chocolate in a microwave-able bowl and give it 30 second turns in the microwave, stirring well after each 30 seconds. Set aside.

4. Beat the eggs lightly with the yogurt (if you are opting for 3 eggs + yogurt) and then add the powdered sugar. Mix well until well incorporated. I used my wooden spoon for this.

5. Next, add the cooled chocolate-butter mixture and stir well to incorporate. Again, no need to beat, just mix in well.

6. Bring out the flour mixture now. Gently fold into the above mixture and mix in just enough to remove to any lumps and until you get a smooth batter.

7. Grease your cake tin or the pan that you intend to use. I used a small ring mould.

8. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 20 mins. Do the skewer test to see if the cake is done, mine took about 20-22 minutes.

Dust the chocolate fudge cake with some icing sugar to make it look pretty! Serve warm with ice cream if you are into that sort of thing.

Basil Pesto Pasta Recipe

After discovering the deliciousness that is homemade fresh basil pesto, I had to try a pesto pasta immediately. It was a totally delicious, healthy, and quick-fix dinner on a weeknight (and so the pictures were taken in the light box)



Basil Pesto Pasta
Serves 2

Ingredients:
2 cups of pasta of your choice, cooked al dente
3/4 cup basil pesto
One small broccoli, cut into florets
A handful of green peas
1 tomato, cubed
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste
2 tbsp parmesan cheese
A few basil leaves, roughly chopped (optional)

How I Made It:

1. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the minced garlic. Fry for about 30 seconds until fragrant. Add the broccoli florets, tomato, and grean peas to this and stir fry for a minute. Sprinkle some water and cook for about 4-5 mins until the broccoli is cooked and soft.

2. Add the pesto and stir until it coats the vegetables. Toss in the cooked pasta, salt and pepper and mix well until all the ingredient are well incorporated.

3. Garnish with chopped basil leaves (if using) and parmesan before serving. You can serve this cold or warm.



The beauty of this recipe is, you can add any vegetables of your choice and serve it as a main dish or even as a pesto pasta salad. Its absolutely delicious, try it!

Whole Earth Peranakan Thai Vegetarian Restaurant, Singapore

To be fair, Singapore does have its own share of vegetarian food and restaurants. It may not be easily available in regular food courts but there are tons of restaurants that will cater to vegetarians, especially Indian.

Whole earth is one of those out-of-the-box restaurants that serve good, flavourful vegetarian food. Their monkey head mushrooms are most popular although we didn't order it during this trip.



I've been to this restaurant near work a bunch of times but thanks to my Project 365, I had my 'good' camera handy last week when we went there for dinner.



They serve peanuts that are just rightly salted, a sweet-ish pickled fruit/vegetable which I think is pear, and vegetarian sambal with calamansi. The sambal is very strong and spicy. Awesome to munch on while you wait for the food.

They have a bunch of healthy drinks to pick from. This is Owen's orange soursop juice. Note: they don't serve soft drinks. How's that for a message?

Olive brown rice. Wonderfully flavourful and a must-have if you visit this place.




Tom Yam fried rice. I love this too. Its mildly spicy and has a lovely note of lemongrass in it.



Hong Kong fried noodles. Was okay, quite passable.



Assam Pedas or Mock fish curry. The mock fish in it looks remarkably like fish and the gravy is really unexplainable. It has a pretty strong flavour so all may not like it.



Thai Battered Oyster Mushroom - sin on a plate. Its deep fried, its super crisp and the sauce is wonderfully orange-y. I love it!



Eggplant with sataw or stinky beans. The beans are definitely 'stinky' and quite bitter so order this dish if you really like eggplant and sambal and don't mind experimenting.



Yam ring. This is another deep fried dish that's super crispy outside but the yam is very creamy and yummy. Every table in the restaurant had one order of this so a must-try, definitely.



Mushroom Rendang curry. I love rendang! It has wonderful notes of Kerala cuisine so I never pass by an opportunity to eat it. This was my favourite dish of them all. The mushroom had a texture very similar to chicken but the flavour definitely won't put off a vegetarian. An absolute must must MUST try!

Whole Earth Peranakan Thai Vegetarian Restaurant
Website
*No added MSG

Average cost per person will be between SGD 25 to SGD 35 depending on what you order. 

Fresh Basil Pesto Recipe

Its not super easy to get fresh basil in Singapore. Its not impossible either but somehow, when I do come across them in the supermarket, I feel they are wilted and cost too much. Why bother when there are a gazillion different types of other greens around, that are more local.



I did, however, manage to score an entire bag of super fresh basil in Giant supermarket a couple of weeks back. Ooh the flavour was mindblowing. Although I have tried pesto pasta and pesto chicken before in restaurants, making your pesto is way way better! I was a bit skeptical if TH would like it but he actually loved the pesto pasta I made with (recipe coming up next!)



Fresh Basil Pesto 
Makes about 3/4 cup

Ingredients:
4 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp minced fresh garlic
1/3 cup pine nuts
1/2 to 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Salt to taste

How I Made It:

Dunk all ingredients into a mixer or food processor and grind to an almost smooth paste. Can be served in various ways, most popular being pesto pasta, over toasted bread, in pizza, etc. Can keep refrigerated in an air tight container for up to 3 days.

You can also substitue the pine nuts for walnuts, sunflower seeds (I tried these once and loved it!), or any other nuts you have in hand.



First two pictures in this post taken in the home made light box for food photography.