Easy peasy fake chocolate torte

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To celebrate the end of our degree our tutor invited the whole group for a barbecue at his house, which I took as the perfect opportunity to whip up a really chocolatey dessert. 

The reason this is an easy peasy (and fake) chocolate torte, is that although the sponge part of a torte is kept the same, the traditional apricot is swapped for raspberry conserve and the chocolate glaze (which usually involves thermometers and smearing chocolate all over granite) is swapped for ganache. Still delicious but so much less faff.

You will need a 25cm tin for the sponge as it forms one cake.

For the chocolate sponge you will need:
225g butter (room temperature so it's nice and soft)
280g icing sugar 
250g dark chocolate, broken into chunks 
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (ideally the one with vanilla seeds in!)
5 eggs, separated
50g caster sugar
260g plain flour

For the raspberry spread you will need:
150g raspberry conserve
3 tbsp water

For the chocolate ganache you will need:
200ml double cream
250g dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180°C/356°F. Line the bottom of the tin with greaseproof paper before buttering and flouring the top of the paper to make sure you can get the cake out!

Start off by melting the chocolate in a bowl over boiling water - keep an eye on it so that the chocolate doesn't split.

Beat the butter either with a wooden spoon or electric whisk so it's soft and creamy, before then beating in the vanilla essence and sugar to form a pale, creamy mixture. Add the melt chocolate and combine it all together.

Separate the eggs into two different bowls. Add the yolks (ideally one at a time, although this isn't always very easy!) to the butter mixture, whisking in with each yolk you add. 

Whisk the whites until they get nice and stiff; add the caster sugar and keep whisking for an extra 30 seconds.

Gently fold half the egg whites through the chocolatey mix - do it nice and gently to keep the air in! Do the same with the other half.

Once the egg whites have been folded through, transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and put in the oven for 50-60minutes, until a skewer pushed through the middle comes out clean. If the cake starts to brown before it is baked, pop some silver foil over the tin.

Allow the cake to cool in the tin before turning out onto a wire rack.

The spreading of the raspberry conserve can get a little messy, so I popped some silver foil underneath the wire rack.

Put the raspberry conserve and water in a pan and warm on the hob until the conserve has melted. Use a brush and paint the bottom and sides of the cake - do loads of layers of it as it soaks in and keeps the cake nice and moist, as well as infusing it with a lovely raspberry flavour!

To make the ganache, break up the chocolate in a bowl. Heat the cream in a pan until it forms a gentle simmer before then pouring over the chocolate and whisking until smooth. Allow to cool a little before then smothering the cake in a delicious chocolate ganache.

If you have any leftover ganache you can pop it in an airtight container in the fridge and use to cover fairy cakes.

The cake will keep for a week in an airtight box, not that it will as it is so utterly delicious.