Marbled Chocolate Crumble Cake

I know I've baked this Dan Lepard recipe before, but as it dates back to 2008, it was probably before I started blogging! Anyway, it was so long ago that I came back to it with few memories of the past cake. FB had requested a chocolate cake, which is quite unusual for her, but I'm always happy to indulge in chocolate. Looking through my recipe books, I found this in Dan's latest book - Short and Sweet -  and while it stirred memories there were no definite feelings about whether I'd thought it a good cake or not, so it was definitely time to try it again.

It's a fairly simple recipe, although it requires a big act of faith to sprinkle the heavy clumps of chocolate crumble on a still wobbling, part-baked cake. I took the opportunity to make the cake special by using my huge chocolate 'chef's drops' from Willie's Cacao. I cut down the chocolate a little, to 75g, so that I only used half my tub of drops. It was still fantastic to bite into a large piece of good quality chocolate when eating the cake.

The balance of the cake is in favour of the vanilla portion of the batter (75%), but this is offset by adding chocolate drops and the slightly bitter chocolate crumble. Overall, there's chocolate in every bite, which is what matters most!  While it's cake with fairly standard sponge cake proportions of ingredients, it made a light, moist, well textured cake and the crumble topping lifted it out of the ordinary. This time I hope it's not forgotten for so long!