Chocolate Coffee Fudge Cake – Fairtrade Fortnight

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Did you know that its Fairtrade Fortnight?

What is Fairtrade??

Millions of farmers and workers in developing countries who work hard every day to grow the food we eat still don’t earn enough to know where their next meal is coming from. In other words, they do not have food security. But we can all do something to tackle this injustice and support farmers and workers to put food on their families’ tables, by harnessing the power of Fairtrade.

When people are paid a fair price, they can have more control over their lives when times are hard, and worry less about how they will feed their families. Whether it’s the extra cash in their pockets or being able to expand their farms to grow more food to eat, Fairtrade means many farmers and workers are able to fulfil a basic human need – to put enough food on the table for the people they care about, all year round.

Think back to what you ate this morning..perhap you had a coffee and maybe it came from Kenya or a banana from Columbia or tea from India. How is it fair in the world we live in that people do not get a sufficient amount of money for the produce they work so hard to provide?

When I was asked to create a recipe for Fairtrade fortnight I knew it was something I could get on board with. I wanted to include as many of the best known Fairtrade products that I could, so this recipe includes coffee, cocoa, sugar, and bananas. Its not technically a breakfast food although you can totally justify eating this in the morning – coffee and bananas. Yes.

You may not have noticed but most of the main supermarkets stock at least a few fairtrade products, especially coffee!

We always buy fairtrade coffee, even though I don’t drink it Andrew does and his current favourite is the Kilimanjaro blend from CafeDirect which is always on our Sainsburys online grocery shop. It also works well in bakes as coffee really enhances the flavour of chocolate. This brand gives 50% of profits to the growers which means you can feel good about buying it and its of such a high quality too. The bananas we buy are also always fair-trade and luckily most of my favourite chocolate is fairtrade too including Green & Blacks, Cadburys Buttons ( I am a total sucker for buttons and always have been ) as well as Waitrose.

Chocolate Coffee Fudge Cake

You will need

For the cake:

150g of self raising flour
45g of fairtrade cocoa powder
175g softened butter
175g fairtrade caster sugar
1 level tsp baking powder
75ml strong cooled fairtrade black coffee
vanilla extract
3 large eggs

Coffee Fudge buttercream filling:

50g butter
30ml strong black coffee
30g soft brown sugar
35 g black treacle
200g icing sugar

1 large sliced banana

One Minute Fudge Frosting:

• Recipe from CDKitchen 

1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 180c. Grease and line two cake tins.

Cream your butter and sugar together, then add your  flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. Finally add your beaten eggs, vanilla and coffee and beat until smooth. Split between your two tins and bake for 15-20 minutes until baked throughout, press lightly on the top and if it springs back its done. Leave to cool whilst making your buttercream:

Melt your butter, sugar, treacle and coffee in a saucepan then beat in your icing sugar. Leave to cool.

Spread onto one half of your cake, add banana slices around the edge and then sandwich together.

Finally make your fudge frosting, mix your ingredients (minus the vanilla) together in a pan and boil for one minute then add your vanilla. Now leave to cool for a minute or so then then using an electric mixer beat for 3 minutes. Now use it to cover the top of your cake, it needs to be added quickly as it sets quite firmly. You can leave plain or decorate with nuts or more chocolate!

Now invite some friends around to share it as it makes a good 8-10 generous servings and its so good you may just want to keep on munching..

If you want this to stay fresh for a few days you may want to omit the fresh banana or perhaps slice and add on top just prior to serving.