Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake

I wish I could give two different star ratings here. The cake itself is excellent: really easy method and would have been easier still if it hadn't turned out that my food processor is about half the capacity of Nigella's. However I processed the dry ingredients with the butter (eta - the butter needs to be cold for this to work - soft butter clumps together instead of blending with the dry ingredients), tipped the result into a bowl, briefly processed the eggs, sour cream and vanilla until blended and mixed them in, and it turned out fine - great taste and texture and bears out my conviction that cocoa powder makes just as well-flavoured a cake as melted chocolate with a lot less trouble and worry.

The icing/frosting does use melted chocolate and is a lot more trouble for a lot less reward - far too sweet. The taste of sugar completely overwhelmed the chocolate; next time I make this cake I shall try a classic ganache instead.

So the cake gets 5 stars, icing gets 1 making an average of 3.

eta: Ganache is definitely the way to go. I found 200g chocolate (I used Bourneville as I've found the best quality dark chocolate can produce a ganache just the wrong side of bitter) and 200 ml cream was enough for a generous filling and coating for the top only. 250 of each would probably be needed if the sides are to be coated too.