Round Quadruple Chocolate Cake

Our answer

Nigella's Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake (from FEAST) is a rich chocolate cake, studded with chocolate chips and soaked with a sticky chocolate syrup. The cake works best as a loaf cake as this shape of cake has a small surface area, meaning it takes longer to cook and retains some moisture. So our preference would be to use a loaf pan. You could also use a disposable aluminium loaf pan if you don't have a regular metal one. We would suggest replacing the sour cream with a full-fat Greek yogurt (approx. 5% fat content). The fat content of yogurt is lower but as there is not that much sour cream used in the cake it should not affect the fiished cake too much.

The loaf pan used is approximately 21 x 11 x 7.5cm (9 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches) has an approximate volume of 1.6 litres (6 2/3 cups). The closest round pan would be about 20cm (8 inches) diameter and 7cm (3 inches) deep, or you could use a 23cm (9 inches) diameter pan which is 5cm (2 inches) deep. The cake batter is quite liquid so it would need to be a fixed bottom pan as a springform pan would probably leak. However the baking time will be quite different, we would suggest that you start checking the cake after 45 minutes of baking and we would mention that we have not tried the cake in this form so are unable to guarantee the results. We would also suggest maybe trying Nigella's Chocolate Gingerbread as this is a soft and slightly spiced moist chocolate cake. This cake is baked in a rectangular roasting pan and uses milk rather than sour cream.