It seems like a long time since I last baked a cake – hardly surprising as I have one of the best cake bakers I know living under the same roof.

Why have a dog and bark etc? My wife Tracy has an indefinable, magical way with eggs, butter, flour and sugar.

A combination of a keen eye, a careful hand and a little witchcraft (my personal opinion!) mean that her cakes spring from their tins as light and moist as you like, seemingly with very little effort from her. She has recipes, but they are rarely consulted.

I, on the other hand, rather huff and puff my way through the construction of a cake. Nothing seems to come naturally, so I have to rely on recipes and past successes for my guidelines. Mostly, my recipes work fine, but occasionally I open the oven door with trepidation to find a deflated, sad little cake, looking at me sullenly, and I have no idea why.

So, I bravely pulled on my apron and decided to make a new cake this week – one I’d been planning for a while. Whenever we head down to Suffolk to see relatives, I try to make time to head out to the charming little village of Orford, a picture-perfect little place on the estuary of the river Alde, close to where it empties into the North Sea.

There are delightful shops, smokehouses and a very special little café called the Pump Street Bakery.

Pump Street Bakery

It’s a delightful artisanal place, making dozens of breads, luscious pastries and tarts. Their sausage rolls are, in my opinion, the best in the world – tasty, well-seasoned sausagemeat wrapped in ethereal layers of richly buttery puff pastry.

Just recently, they’ve started making their own chocolate bars, too – from bean to bar in the same building. They roast, conch and process the cocoa beans to make small batches of incredible chocolate, some of which is flavoured.

One bar is made with sourdough crumbs and sea salt (I’m presuming they think it a great way of using up bits of stale loaves), and it is utter heaven. The crunch and taste of the crumbs, the prickle of the salt and the deep, dark flavours of the chocolate make for an incredible experience.

Sourdough starter

Since my first bite I’ve been wanting to use the idea in a recipe of some kind, so I started looking through my notes and decided upon a chocolate fudge cake of some kind. I then wondered if anyone had ever used sourdough starter to make a cake with.

Sourdough starter is something we almost always have in the fridge at home; Tracy also makes incredible bread. A little research came up with a couple of recipes for sourdough-based cakes and so I got cracking.

The cake was revelatory; the starter gives it a huge flavour boost – an almost indescribable warmth and bloom of malty cereal-ness. Along with the chocolate it’s deep, rich and hugely tasty.

I needed to get the crunch of those crumbs in somewhere, so I decided to sprinkle them over a shiny glaze to top things off, and use a sweeter buttercream as my filling. It worked incredibly well; a hugely chocolate-y cake, full of flavours and textures, and deeply satisfying.

I realise that many of you will not have easy access to sourdough starter, but there are many keen home bakers out there who do, along with many artisan bakeries, so it’s perhaps time to go cap in hand and ask if you might liberate a small amount of their magical ‘mother’ with which to make this cake. It adds such a huge dimension of flavour that it really is worth searching for.

I’m sure they’ll accept a slice or two of cake by way of recompense!

For the cake :

150g plain flour

340g unrefined golden caster sugar

85g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon Maldon salt

240ml sourdough starter

2 large free-range eggs

120ml sour cream

1 cup vegetable oil

120ml espresso or strong

black coffee

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the chocolate buttercream:

225g salted butter

60g cocoa powder

75g bitter chocolate

½ tsp instant coffee

1-2 tbsp double cream

390g icing sugar

For the chocolate glaze :

60ml water

2 tsp powdered gelatine

150g unrefined golden caster sugar

80ml water1 heaped tbsp glucose syrup

100g cocoa powder

80ml double cream

Extras:

9” cake tin

250g well-toasted sourdough breadcrumbs

METHOD :

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 180ºC / Gas 4. Grease and base-line the cake tin.

Sift the flour and cocoa into the bowl of a mixer, and add the sugar, baking soda, and salt. Mix to combine. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and beat on medium speed for about 3 minutes until smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula occasionally.

Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for around 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean from the centre of the cake.

Allow to cool completely in the tin on a wire rack, then unmould it carefully and cut in two horizontally. As the cake cools, make the buttercream; melt the bitter chocolate in the microwave, or in a bowl over barely simmering water and set aside to cool.

Whisk the butter in a food mixer until it’s pale and fluffy. Stop, sift in the cocoa, and resume beating until well combined.

Add the cooled melted chocolate. Dissolve the instant coffee in a tablespoon of the cream, then add to the butter mixture. Add the icing sugar a little at a time, beating until combined.

Adjust the texture if necessary, by using more cream. You should have a nice thick, velvety buttercream.

Spread this carefully onto the lower half of the cake and gently place the upper half on top, pressing gently to fix the whole thing together. You may not need all of it, but it will keep for cupcakes.

Now for the glaze; pour the 60ml of water into a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatine over the top and set aside. In a small saucepan, gently heat the sugar and 80ml water over medium heat.

When the sugar has dissolved, take the pan off the heat and whisk in the glucose, followed by the cocoa. It should become nice and glossy. Stir in the double cream and return the pan to a medium heat. Bring the mixture to the boil, whisking, then remove the pan from the heat and strain into the metal bowl. Cool for 15 minutes, then stir in the softened gelatine until it has dissolved completely.

Strain the glaze into a bowl and cool until it reaches around 30ºC. At this temperature it will set perfectly. Spoon it over the cake. Allow to set slightly before sprinkling liberally with the crunchy sourdough crumbs.