OK. Easy one first. Cake comes out very moist, dense and rich - you only need a tiny slice. A real high-impact flavour and looks fabulous with the edible gold dusting powder on the top. There's no flour, in case you think I made a mistake.

 

Dark chocolate mousse cake (Green & Black's recipe book)

Need:
Round cake tin 8in or 9in (9in will give quite a flat cake), with removable base if poss
Heatproof bowl (pref metal or pyrex) for melting ingredients over a saucepan of water
Saucepan of water.

1 tablespoon ground almonds, plus extra for dusting the tin
300g good dark chocolate (min 60% cocoa) or 200g dark choc + 100g G&B Mayan Gold or other orange chcolate (the Mayan Gold gives it a slightly spicy flavour - very grown-up), broken into pieces
275g caster sugar
165g unsalted butter (+ a little extra for coating the tin)
pinch of sea salt (or ordinary, but not as big a pinch)
5 large eggs
gold dust or icing sugar for painting/dredging the top.

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4*.
Brush tin with a little melted butter, dust with extra ground almonds. Shake off any excess.
Melt the chocolate, caster sugar, butter and salt in the bowl suspended over a saucepan of barely -simmering water. Remove from heat once melted.
Whisk the eggs with the ground almonds. Fold into the chocolate mixture. It will thicken after a few minutes.
Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35-40 mins.
Remove the side of the tin and leave cake to cool on base. If your tin doesn't have a loose bottom, leave the whole thing on a wire rack to cool. (You might want to ease a knife around the edges just to make sure it won't stick.
Remove from tin, dredge with icing sugar in a small sieve, or brush with gold.

This cake doesn't rise much. If chilled overnight it will be dense, fudgey and wicked. (It's pretty much there if not chilled, I can tell you.) Serves 10.

----Cake, take 2----

For a more traditional (but still great-tasting) chocolate cake which is suitable for carving into shapes or supporting lots of modelling icing (sugarpaste) if required, this one by Linda Price is my tried and tested and I have precise measurements for round and square tins 6in to 12in. (As a rule, any mix will make a round cake of a given size or a square cake of an inch smaller, ie the 8in round would do a 7in sq; the 10in sq would do an 11in round and so on.)

If I'm doing a shaped cake, I generally do two 10in squares. This gives me enough to chop up and play with, or gives me a reasonable surface area to set up a scenario on. (Eg my mum and her 2 pals reclining on deckchairs by a pool with a bloke swimming in it who had lost his bathers, which was my mum's 70th last year.)
I'd normally sandwich them together with jam (raspberry, cherry or apricot works well), do any cutting out I need to and then cover with a layer of buttercream or chocolate buttercream, before covering some or all of it with sugarpaste, depending on what I'm doing. Gives quite a high cake and serves loads as it can be sliced thin. (If you don't need as much cake, you could do one and split it. Maybe put some buttercream in the centre just to make it a bit higher.)  I'll do measurements for 8in round with 10in square in brackets - let me know if you need other sizes.

Need (for one):

Butter, softened              165g [325g]
Caster sugar                   300g [ 570g]
Vanilla extract*                 2 teaspoons [ 4 teaspoons] *extract is not as strong as essence, but has a much better flavour. If you can only get essence, use half measure.
Eggs, medium                 3 [5]
self-raising flour             65g [125g]
plain flour                        200g [350g]
bicarbonate of soda     1 teaspoon [2 1/4 teaspoons]
cocoa powder                70g [110g]
buttermilk                        250ml [500ml]

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4*.
Lightly grease the tin and line the base.
Sift the flours together with the bicarb and the cocoa (I sift three times for best results). Set aside for now.
Beat the butter and sugar in an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat the eggs separately with the vanilla extract, either with a hand blender or a fork. Add this to the fluffy butter and sugar in the electric mixer in small amounts (roughly one egg's worth), beating well after each addition (I usually leave the mixer on slow and dribble the egg mixture in through the top.)
Transfer to a large bowl and fold in the sifted ingredients in small amounts alternately with the buttermilk (I do a couple of spoons dry, fold till it disappears. a splurge of buttermilk, fold till it disappears and so on until it's all combined).
Pour into the tin, smooth the surface and bake for 1hr 10mins [1hr 30mins], testing towards the end of the baking time. A skewer or knitting needle inserted into the centre will come out clean when it is done.
Leave to cool for a few minutes before turning onto a wire rack.

For a more unusual texture, I once made a beetroot  chocolate cake. I wish I could find the exact recipe I used because it was fantastic. There are loads of similar ones on the web, mostly Australian, I notice. I did it with a topping which was mascarpone, icing sugar and orange juice with little flecks of finely-grated peel. Everyone loved it. The cake was moist, deep purple in colour and didn't taste of beets, though there was a depth to it, maybe a slight earthiness.

For a non-chocolate cake it's hard to beat a Victoria sponge. If you don't have a recipe for that I can do you the one I use which I've scaled up for 10in cakes.

 

For a light, fluffy cake that's good for dressing with fresh cream and fruit, you can't go past a genoise. I have measures for 2x8in round and 2x9in round [in brackets]

You need:

plain flour          225g  [300g], plus extra for dusting tins
eggs                   6  [8]
caster sugar     165g  [220g]
melted butter    75g  [100g], plus extra for brushing tins

Preheat oven 180C/350F/Gas mark 4
Brush two tins with butter, line with non-stick baking paper, then grease the paper and dust lightly with flour, shaking off any excess.
Sift the flour three times onto paper.
Mix the eggs and sugar in a large heatproof bowl, place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and beat with electric beaters for 8 minutes or until thick and fluffy. Remove from the heat and beat for another 3  minutes until slightly cooled. Add the melted, cooled butter and flour. Fold in quickly and lightly with a large metal spoon until just combined. Spread between the tins and bake for 15-20 mins [25mins] or until lightly golden and shrinking slightly from the tin. Leave in the tin for 5 mins before turning onto wire rack. Eat same day, or make at night for eating next day. This cake will not keep.
 

*I had a fan assisted oven until recently and found that I needed to take the heat down by 10degrees and cut the cooking time by 10 mins to the hour. I also tended to double-line the tins, especially for ones that needed longer. My old one conked out just before Christmas and I haven't baked in this new oven yet.

Happy baking! f.