This weekend I went to a dessert party with wine, lots and lots of wine. Anyway I tried baking a new chocolate mandarin cake for the party and thought it was rather tasty, moist and suprisingly not too rich!

Mandarin chocolate mudcake

250g good quality dark chocolate, chopped

250g butter, chopped into cubes

6 eggs, separated

1/2 C caster sugar

3 Tbsp plain flour

1/4 C ground almonds

1 tsp mandarin zest

1. Preheat the oven to 190C.

2. Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir until just melted. Remove from heat.

3. Place the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and mix until lightly combined. Gradually add the melted chocolate to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

4. Fold through the flour, zest and ground almonds

5. Place the egg whites in a clean bowl and beat with an electric beater until stiff peaks form.

6. Fold half the egg whites through the chocolate mixture until just combined then fold through the other half.

7. Pour mixture into a 23cm greased springform tin and bake for 35minutes. The cake will still look very wet but dont cook it any longer.

8. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin. Remove when cool then dust with cocoa and serve with mandarin slices and natural yoghurt or whipped cream.