Date and Hazelnut Chocolate Fudge Cake

Date and Hazelnut Chocolate Fudge Cake - a big title for a cake which, athough delicious in it's own way, didn't live up to the expectation of  the recipe on the Waitrose website.

There was nothing fudgy about this cake - it was almost feather light, despite containing date purée, which I expected to make it fairly dense in texture. The use of chocolate hazelnut (Nutella) spread as the only source of chocolate in the cake didn't make it very chocolatey either. The dates weren't noticeable as a separate flavour, but that was to be expected, as anyone who's eaten sticky toffee pudding can testify. There was cocoa as well as Nutella in the filling and frosting, which gave it a stronger chocolate flavour but unfortunately there was not quite enough of it to balance the perceived shortcomings of the cake.

Despite all that, we all really liked this cake - the combination of all the flavours made it much more interesting than a basic chocolate sponge cake. The crumb was tender and light, but also moist, thanks to the date purée. Using the dates to replace some of the sugar meant the cake wasn't over-sweet either. The nutty flavour of the Nutella was quite strong, even if it wasn't very chocolatey, and the filling and frosting was a rich contrast to the lightness of the cake, although the cake did need more of both.

I think, as the person reading the recipe and making the cake, I had different expectations to the people just eating 'another' chocolate cake. I don't often make light layer cakes, but I'd be very happy to produce this one again. I just think I'd call it something different, and double the quantity of frosting!