In Hour is Come, Dotty makes a chocolate cake for Lucas, her husband’s young son. This is the recipe for the cake including the gooey fudge icing which tends to flow over the top of the cake and drip down its sides.
If you have children, they will love helping to decorate this cake with chocolate flakes, smarties, buttons or any other sweets or sprinkles.

Ingredients
200 gms (1 3/4 cups) self-raising flour
2 level teaspoons baking powder
40 gms (2 level tablespoons) cocoa powder, plus 1 tablespoon for the icing.
225 gms caster sugar/ 1 cup of fine sugar
350 gms (3 1/2 sticks) soft butter
4 large free-range eggs
100 gms (4 ounzes) dark chocolate
325 gms icing sugar/ 2 1/4 cups confectioners sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup (if not available use maple syrup or light molasses)
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c/Gas4. Grease and line the bases of two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa into a mixing bowl and put to one side.
2. Beat the sugar with 225 gms of butter until soft and pale. Add the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of the flour mixture so it doesn’t curdle, and beat and repeat until all the eggs have been added. Add the remaining flour mixture and beat until evenly mixed.
3. Divide the cake mixture between the tins and level the tops. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the cakes have shrunk from the sides of the tins and the tops spring back when lightly pressed. Turn onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
4. Break the chocolate into small pieces and put into a bowl. Bring a pan of water to a simmer, then stand the bowl over it, making sure the base of the bowl doesn’t touch the water. Leave until the chocolate has melted. Remove the bowl from the pan and leave until the chocolate is just warm.

5. Beat together 75 gms butter and 150 gms icing sugar until really light and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and beat again. Spread the mixture on one cake, then put the other one on top. I put the two tops of the cakes together leaving the flat bases for the top and bottom.
6. Sift 175 gms icing sugar and 1 tablespoon cocoa into a bowl. Put 50 gms butter, 1 tablespoon golden syrup and 1 tablespoon of water into a small pan and heat gently until the butter has melted and the mixture is hot, but don’t let it boil. Stir it into the icing sugar and pour over the top of the cake, spreading evenly. The icing is gooey so you can have a glass of hot water beside you into which you dip your knife, to stop the icing sticking to it.
7. Leave it to cool if necessary, and decorate.
Variation
If, like me, you can’t buy high quality flour, or self-raising flour, then just adding more baking powder can make the cake dry. This is my amended version for a soft, well risen cake.
250 gms butter mixed with 250 gms of sugar. Add 6 large eggs, one at a time and mix. Use 210 gms flour, 40 gms of cocoa powder and 3.5 teaspoons of baking powder. I cook this at 170 degrees C.
In the first version of the recipe, I don’t see an amount for cocoa. Would it be as in the second version?
Thank you for pointing this out. The original recipe should have 40 gms of cocoa plus 1 tablespoon for the icing.
How about a conversion to cups, teaspoons, etc. for those of us in the US?
Sorry, I don’t have the expertise to convert all the ingredients to cups. Sorry
Kindly provided by Dr Jean
The cake sounds wonderful and the icing description makes my mouth water. But…in the US, we use imperial measurements so I have no idea what temperature to bake the cake at. Is it possible to convert the entire recipe for those of us outside the rest of the world that uses metric? Thanks…I KNOW we’re a bit behind but we colonists are an independent lot LOL!
Sorry, I don’t have the expertise to convert the ingredients.
Gas make 4 is 350 degrees F
This looks and sounds amazing. I am definitely going to bake it. Thank you for sharing.
A huge thank you to Dr Jean for the American weights and alternatives to golden syrup.
Wow! This sounds just like the cake my daddy use to make when I was a little girl (I’m 67 now). That was my all time favorite cake. I really miss it. Thank you for sharing. I will try to make it and see how it turns out.