Mary Berry’s chocolate loaf cake is a brownie mixture baked in two small loaf tins. It’s made with ground almonds, cocoa, light muscovado sugar, baking spread and white chocolate chips. It bakes at 180°C/Fan 160°C/Gas 4 for about an hour.
It appears in the 2023 edition of her Baking Bible and not in the 2010 original. Berry says the small loaves are great to take on a picnic. You can vary the slice thickness to suit your guests.
The chocolate chips go in twice, and that’s the part to get right. Only 125g of the 150g goes into the batter. The rest is folded into the melted icing to give a ripple across the top.
Mary Berry Chocolate Loaf Cake
Course: DessertCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy8
servings15
minutes1
hour380
kcalFrom the 2023 Baking Bible. Everything but the chips goes into one bowl and gets whisked, with no creaming and no melting before you start. Two loaves from one mixture, and Berry says they freeze well.
Ingredients
55 g (2 oz) ground almonds
225 g (8 oz) baking spread, straight from the fridge
175 g (6 oz) self-raising flour
225 g (8 oz) light muscovado sugar
55 g (2 oz) cocoa powder
5 large eggs
1 level tsp baking powder
150 g (5 oz) white chocolate chips
- For the icing:
175 g (6 oz) dark chocolate, broken into pieces
50 g butter
Directions
- Preheat:Heat the oven to 180°C/Fan 160°C/Gas 4. Grease and line two 450g (1 lb) loaf tins with non-stick baking paper.
- Mix:Put all the loaf ingredients except the white chocolate chips into a large bowl. Whisk with an electric hand whisk until light and fluffy, then stir in 125g (4½ oz) of the chips.
- Bake:Spoon into the tins and level the surfaces. Bake for about 1 hour, until well risen and the tops spring back when lightly pressed. Cool in the tins for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and peel off the paper.
- Ice:Melt the dark chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, then leave to cool slightly. Fold in the remaining white chocolate chips and spread over the tops of the loaves for a ripple effect.
- Serve:Cut each loaf into slices.
FAQs
Can I bake it as one big loaf instead?
Berry’s publisher advises against it, and they’ve answered this directly. A reader asked The Happy Foodie about using a 900g (2lb) tin. The team said they wouldn’t recommend it, because the edges risk overcooking while the middle stays underdone.
If you’re going to do it anyway, they gave a figure. Bake for 70 to 80 minutes, covering loosely with foil for the last 20 if the top browns too fast. That’s the publisher’s team rather than Berry herself, and two small tins is also how she handles her apple and cinnamon loaf cake.
Self-raising or plain flour?
Self-raising, plus one level teaspoon of baking powder. Here’s the useful part: the American edition of this same book prints the recipe with plain flour instead.
That edition keeps the flour at 175g, raises the baking powder from 1 teaspoon to 3, and adds half a teaspoon of salt. So if you only have plain flour in the cupboard, you don’t need to guess your way to a substitution. Berry’s own publisher has already worked it out, in print.
Why save some of the white chocolate chips for the icing?
Because they aren’t there to melt, they’re there to marble. The icing is just dark chocolate and butter melted together and left to cool slightly. The remaining 25g of chips are folded through it, and that’s what gives the ripple across the top.
Her instruction to let the chocolate cool slightly first is doing quiet work. My own reading is that chips folded into chocolate that’s still hot will soften into it, giving you a uniform milky brown rather than distinct white streaks. Either way, it costs nothing to wait a couple of minutes.
Baking spread or butter?
She asks for baking spread, straight from the fridge, and she means it literally. There’s no creaming stage in this recipe, so the fat has to be soft enough to whisk from cold, which is what a spread gives you and butter wouldn’t. That last point is my reading rather than something she states.
She isn’t dogmatic about it everywhere. Her lemon drizzle traybake in Absolute Favourites (2015) offers baking spread straight from the fridge or softened butter as alternatives. Here she names only the spread, which is worth following the first time you make it.
How is this different from her brownies?
The tin, and what you’re aiming for. Her Chocolate Chip Brownies in the 2010 Baking Bible warn you not to overcook them. They should have a slightly gooey texture, with a crisp outer crust that comes from the high proportion of sugar.
These loaves want something firmer. They’re baked until well risen and springy on top, which in brownie terms would mean you’d gone too far. There’s a nice detail in her Dark Indulgent Chocolate and Walnut Brownies too: she says a cooked brownie mixture is likely to dip in the middle, and that it all adds to the charm.
How do I store them, and do they freeze?
Berry’s tip on this recipe is short and covers the important half: the loaves freeze well. Since the recipe makes two, that’s a practical answer to the obvious question about quantity.
She gives no keeping time for the iced loaves. For her brownies in the same book she says to store them in an airtight tin, which is a different recipe, so I’d treat that as a sensible default rather than her instruction here. If you’d rather have chocolate with no oven at all, her chocolate biscuit cake is set in the fridge and her chocolate and amaretti bars are no-bake too.
