Chocolate Fudge Cake

1. Preheat the oven to 140C fan.
2. With the help of a brush and a tiny bit of sunflower oil, grease the surface of the tin and set aside. Melt the chocolate gently in a bowl over a pan of water until melted then set aside to cool. Beat the eggs with the sugar, the scraped out vanilla seeds, the maple syrup and the honey for 3 minutes with an electric hand whisk, until quite fluffy. Gently beat in the flours, bicarbonate of soda, salt and ground almonds until all fully incorporated. Finally, fold in the chocolate, grated beetroot, coffee and oil separately with the help of a spatula until thoroughly mixed together- Pour mixture into prepared tin and place in the middle of a hot oven for 1hour and 30 minutes, cover the cake with foil and replace in oven for the remaining 30 minutes. Test the cake by inserting a squewer into the centre to see if it comes out clean (although this cake is so moist that even when the cake is fully cooked, the squewer comes out looking slightly messy). Leave to cool on a wire rack before cutting through the middle and icing it on all sides.

For the topping

1. To make the fudge topping, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water, then remove from heat and add the coffee and the vanilla essence. At this stage the chocolate will seize up slightly, but then relaxes back once the honey is added and gently mixed in. Set aside to cool for 15 minutes before icing the cake. Decorate the top with whatever you fancy but I like using pink flowers, such as tulips. Voila!