Finishing off. By Lee Davison.

So you've done the basic chocolate sponge and you want to add decoration. Here's a reasonably simple jam filling and rich butter icing.

1 lb (454g) Fruit jam.

1/2 Big bar (100g) plain chocolate.

1 egg.

6 oz (170g) of icing sugar.

2 oz (55g) of butter.¹

Divide the sponge into three layers. I found it easier to scribe round the cake, breaking the surface, and then slice through.
Cover the bottom layer with a generous ammount of jam, about half of the total. Spread the jam evenly to within about 1/4 inch of the edge. This done place the middle layer on top and cover with another generous jam layer. Finally replace the top layer. Apricot seems to be the favourite choice for chocolate cake.
Break the egg into a small bowl or cup and beat it thoroughly. Now apologise and explain that you only did it for it's own good. Put it aside for later.
Sift the icing sugar to remove any lumps and put that to one side.
Break up the the chocolate and put that, along with the butter, to melt on a low heat stirring occasionally. If you haven't melted chocolate before then go look here, it's the same thing but with added butter, and stirring.
Once the butter and chocolate have melted add the beaten egg and stir in. The texture of this mixture will change dramatically as you stir, this is ok. Once mixed remove from the saucepan.
Add the icing sugar to the mix and beat it until smooth. This may take a while but eventually it should look like a thick chocolate sauce.
Spread evenly over the cake and leave to set for several hours. If the weather is a bit warm when you do this (like it was when I did) then you may leave it in the fridge to set. In spite of this mine still sagged a bit.
What again! Didn't I do this last time?

[1] Cake, jam, icing. This is not a health trip.

Last page update: 28th July, 2003.

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