Weird World of Food: dark chocolate and bacon cake

Digital journalist

Monday 10 December 2012

This week my mission to find the internet’s strangest creations has taken me to the realm of meaty baking as I try my hand at making a dark chocolate and bacon cake.

Dark chocolate and bacon cake

Now, this is a recipe that I have heard whispers about for quite some time; a dish which, according to many in the online cooking community, turns two ingredients that just should not go together into a delicious, moreish cake.

I am a big fan of both bacon and chocolate so, if the legends are true, I will be one happy camper. However, despite my love of a bacon roll in the morning and chocolate as an anytime pick-me-up, I am not convinced that this cake is going to work. I fail to see how putting meat in a cake can possibly be anything other than, at best, unusual. Ignoring my trepidations, I decide to make the cake, hoping that the myths about how magnificently well bacon and chocolate go together will prove to be true. I start by cooking the bacon until it is crispy and then crumble it and some dark chocolate into a bowl. I am surprised by how good the mixture smells but, then again, it does contain bacon and chocolate so I suppose that is only to be expected; it is the taste that I am more worried about. I mix together some flour, cocoa, sugar, salt, an egg, soured cream, vegetable oil and cold coffee and, once stirred, add in the bacon and chocolate pieces. After giving the batter a good mix, I transfer it to a cake tin (I have decided to use a loaf tin) and cook it for 80 minutes. The cake does smell really good when it comes out of the oven and, briefly, my concerns about the taste fade. I mean, how could it be bad? However, after biting into it I realise that, despite my love of bacon and chocolate, this cake is not for me. It does taste salty, meaty and chocolatey, which is fine, but biting into the hidden chunks of cold bacon is a slightly strange sensation and, for me, they ruined the texture of what would otherwise have probably been a nice cake. So, unfortunately, the legend is not true; it is not possible to make a fantastic cake out of dark chocolate and bacon. However, if you are a fan of cakes filled with chocolate and hidden pockets of cold salty meat then you should definitely give this one a go. If you would like to try making dark chocolate and bacon cake follow the recipe below. The cake 6 slices of bacon, cooked until crispy and crumbled 50g of dark chocolate, broken into pieces 115g of self-raising flour 25g of cocoa powder 125g of caster sugar A pinch of salt 1 egg 25ml of cold strong coffee 115ml of soured cream 60ml of vegetable oil The icing 75g of unsalted butter 75g of icing sugar 50g of dark chocolate, melted 1 Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade 2 Crumble two thirds of the bacon into a bowl 3 Break up 50g of the dark chocolate and add it to the bacon 4 Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt in a bowl and mix well 5 Beat together the egg, cold coffee, vegetable oil and soured cream in a separate bowl 6 Add the egg mixture to the flour and mix well 7 Add the bacon and chocolate to the mixture and stir 8 Put the mixture in a loaf tin and cook for 80 minutes 9 Melt the remaining dark chocolate either in the microwave or in a bowl over boiling water 10 In a separate bowl, beat the butter and the icing sugar together 11 Add the chocolate to the butter and icing sugar and mix together 12 Take the cake out of the oven and place on a wire rack to cool for 10-15 minutes 13 Ice the cake and place a slice of the remaining bacon on top for decoration 14 Serve If you have got a weird recipe that you would like me to try email me. Alternatively, if you have tried making this recipe, why not let me know how you got on by leaving a comment in the box below. Happy baking! Click here to read my Weird World of Food: turtle burgers blog

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Weird World of Food: dark chocolate and bacon cake

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