Chocolate Mousse Cake

One of the best thing about the holidays has been having more time to cook more interesting things. Yesterday we'd been invited to friends for another winter walk and dinner, and as there were going to be 14 of us in total I took along this very rich cake, in case we all hadn't had enough chocolate already over the Christmas period. A little goes a long way!

It's from Nigella's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' book - there is a link to almost the recipe here although the original is slightly different. Because it's cooked in a water bath I wrapped foil over the outside of my tin so no water could leak in. I also used a baking parchment liner in the tin rather than just greasing it or using foil inside, the cake still sticks to it a bit, but not as much as it does to foil.
The original recipe also calls for 300g plain chocolate and 50g milk chocolate, rather than all plain. As I'd forgotten to ask my husband to buy any of the milk I had to sacrifice half of my Lindt Reindeer that came in my stocking! I also melted the chocolate and butter in a microwave, but other than that followed what you see in the link - it bakes at Gas mark 4, which I think is about 180 degrees Celsius.

It's a good recipe for me, I'm not much good at folding in egg whites without the whole mousse collapsing, and because this is baked it doesn't seem to matter so much. As you see I'm a very, very messy cook: