Icing for Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake

Asked by daniwhitehead. Answered on 22nd September 2014

Full question

Hi I was just wondering if I could use the best quality milk chocolate for the icing instead of Dark Chocolate? I want to make the cake for my mum's birthday and she isn't keen on dark chocolate so will it still be good or would it be best to stick with the recommended dark chocolate in this recipe?

Our answer

Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake (from Feast and on the Nigella website) has a type of ganache icing that is made from sour cream, melted chocolate, butter and sugar. It uses dark (bittersweet) chocolate as the stronger flavour of the chocolate helps to balance the rest of the ingredients, as well as the cocoa solids in the chocolate helping the icing to set. This means that the icing does not have a typically dark chocolate taste but is quite mild.

Milk chocolate has a much higher proportion of sugar and you may find that a version with milk chocolate will taste too sweet. We would suggest perhaps trying half dark chocolate and half good quality milk chocolate, such as Green & Black's that has a higer cocoa solids content than some other milk chocolates. You also may not need to add the hot water to thin the icing, just let it cool slightly, stirring frequently, before using.