Chocolate Espresso Cake with Caffe Latte Cream

This is Derek's favorite cake by far. I have never cooked it according to the recipe as I haven't found instant espresso powder. I had used a chocolate powder, but now I skip that step - though Derek has used instant coffee. The weights are all in grams, so a kitchen scale is a must. We tend to use kahlua. For the cream, we did the chocolate thing once, but prefer just to use whipping cream and keep it a little lighter.

I made this for Valentine's Day and everyone loved it. It's like a dense, gooey brownie cake. My cake didn't rise as high as the one in the picture -- perhaps I didn't beat enough at the beginning? It still tasted great. I omitted the liqueur and that didn't seem to detract from the end result. Like the other reviewer, I garnished with plain whipped cream, which definitely helps cut the richness.