Old-fashioned chocolate cake

This is just fantastic. My mother could eat nothing else for the rest of her life. Moist, rich and delicious. I agree that the chocolate is very important - it really needs to be good quality dark stuff. Partly because the taste is so pronounced in the final product (it's not cake with chocolate on it, it's chocolate that's got a little cake in it), and partly because it's so much easier to work with higher end chocolate when you have to melt it for icing as there is a smaller chance that it will seize.

Again this is really a cake that should be eaten on the day it's baked, but I can't see that being a problem!