Cooking: Chocolate love cake with cherries

I was kindly invited to my friend Kren and Dave's for a lovely roast on Saturday night (the last one of winter?), and to say thank you I said I'd bring a dessert. Inspiration was to be found in a Jamie Oliver recipe from the latest copy of Delicious magazine.

I adapted the recipe slightly to suit ingredients I had in my cupboard.

Serves 4

Ingredients:
4 tbsp cocoa powder
200g unsalted butter, softened
200g caster sugar
2 large eggs
200g plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
250g of cherries (after they have been pitted) chopped in quarters
4 tbsp chopped hazelnuts

Chocolate Sauce:
25g unsalted butter
150ml thick cream
75g of 70% dark chocolate broken into small pieces

Method:
1. Heat the oven to 180 degrees.

2. Mix the cocoa powder with 6 tbsp of boiling water and mix until you have a smooth paste.

3. In a second bowl cream together butter and sugar until fluffy and pale. Add the cocoa mixture, eggs, flour, baking powder and mix well.

4. Pour into four bowls for individual servings. Sprinkle with the cherries and hazelnuts and bake for 20mins.

5. While the cake is baking make your sauce. Add the butter and cream to a pan and hear to just below the boil. Turn off the heat and stir in the chocolate, mixing until combined. Set aside to cool down slightly.

6. Take the cakes out of the oven, allow to rest for 5mins. Pour over chocolate sauce and serve!


Tips from chef Richie:
- This was a very rich cake and sauce. You could comfortably strectch the mix to five people if you had more coming over for dinner.

- The original recipe calls for shallow dishes which I didn't have, so I used cereal bowls instead. This meant that I had lots of cherry and hazelnut goodness on the top but it was a bit bland at the bottom. I'd be tempted to fold the cherries and hazelnuts through the cake before baking.