Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

I start with this because I think it is the essence of all that is desirable in chocolate: its dark intensity isn’t toyed with, nor upstaged by any culinary elaboration. This is the plainest of plain loaf cakes – but that doesn’t convey the damp, heady aromatic denseness of it. To understand that, you just have to cook it. And as you’ll see, that isn’t hard at all.

I also think this makes a wonderful pudding, either by itself with ice cream or, as when my in-laws were round for lunc