Delicious American Fudge Cake with Icing

This is a fantastic recipe I learnt from my American grandma. It is as American as it gets, which simply means the whole cake is just butter, chocolate and sugar - but it is worth it, believe me. 

So let's start! 

Preheat oven to 200 degrees

For the ingredients, you will need: 
 
2/3 cup soft butter or margarine
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
 ¾ of baking chocolate bar (large), melted and cooled
2 ½ cups flour
1 ¼ teaspoons soda = natron
½ tsp. salt
 1 ¼ cold water
 
First of all, cream together butter, sugar, eggs and blend with the mixer. Blend in the melted chocolate.
Then, mix flour, natron, salt in a bowl and add to the other mixture, first some water, then flour, then water etc.
 
Bake at 200 degrees (Celsius) for about 40 minutes in two cake pans lined with baking paper or greased with butter and flour.

Take the cake out and let it cool for a couple of minutes before taking out of the cake pans. Then let it cool completely before adding the icing. 
 
Fluffy Icing

This icing is as sweet as it is delicious! It is also really versatile and works great with food colouring, as well as a glue if you make a gingerbread house. 
For the icing, you will need: 
1 ½ cups of sugar
1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar
1/3 cup of water
2 egg whites (unbeaten)
1 tsp of vanilla
 
Put all ingredients except for the vanilla into a double boiler. Cook over boiling water, beating constantly with an egg beater until icing stands in peaks (about seven minutes). Stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla. Spread between layers, on top and sides of cake. 
Before you decorate the cooled cake with it, you can colour it according to a special occasion if you want. Fondant and chocolate work well with this icing, as it is so sticky that nothing will slide off. 

PS: if fudge cake isn't your thing, you can also use the brownie recipe as the cake base. 

​Happy Baking!