Let them eat happy speckled Easter cake

I made this fudge cake recipe and consumed it yesterday with the help of friends. I decorated it with speckled eggs for an 'Eastery' feel. Delicious, if I do say so myself! Well, I didn't write the recipe so I'm allowed to say that :)

Chocolate Fudge Cake

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
250g butter, softened
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
75g dark chocolate, melted

Fudge Icing

200g butter, softened

200g pure icing sugar

200g dark chocolate, metled

1. Preheat oven to 180C or 160C fan. Grease and line two 20cm round sandwich pans (don't skip the lining step!)
2. Place flour, cocoa, baking powder, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla extract and melted dark chocolate in a food processor and process until smooth. If batter is a little stiff, add 2-3 tbsp water and process again (I did).
3. Divide mixture equally between prepared pans, smooth surface and bake for 35-40 mins, until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool cakes for 5 mins, then out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
4. To make icing, place butter and icing sugar in a clean food processor and process until combined. Add melted chocolate and process until smooth. Sandwich together layers of cake with half icing and top with remaining icing.

Recipe from Australian Good Food magazine, August 2009.

Hints

• For the best results and a beautifully moist cake, use dark chocolate with 70% cocoa solids.
• I ran into some problems with my icing - the ingredients 'split', possibly because the melted chocolate was too hot when I added it to the icing sugar and butter mixture. To fix this, I refrigerated the icing overnight, microwaved it slightly to soften, and beat in extra icing sugar (about 1/2 cup) I also added milk (2-3 tablespoons) to fluff up the icing and make it easier to spread.