With this chocolatey espresso-soaked bread, you can have your coffee & eat it, too! This loaf bakes a perfect breakfast treat!

Yield: 1 loaf
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 35 minutes

Mocha Loaf

Disclaimer: This recipe was not written by Anyonita Nibbles and is not a gluten free recipe and has not been tested without gluten.

Is it a bread or is it cake? Honestly, it doesn't really matter because (I'm told) it tastes incredible. You've got rich flavours going on in this loaf: deep flavours of strong espresso and rich dark chocolate. There's just a little bit of sugar in this recipe to help round the cake out and take away some of the bitterness from the coffee and the bitter chocolate. I served it with a sprinkling of icing sugar just to help sweeten it up a bit more and for contrast.

This loaf is from the Baking Mad website and was made using products supplied by Baking Mad for the purpose of testing. I've tweaked the recipe just a bit, but pretty much followed the original recipe to the letter. Because the flour supplied wasn't gluten free, I wasn't able to sample this, but as I said, I've been told (repeatedly, in fact) that the loaf was delicious and a good mix of sweet with bitter.

When I was looking for recipes to test, I kept coming back to Baking Mad's summer baking recipes, completely enamoured with all of the fantastic treats they've whipped up! Clearly, this dark chocolate and coffee loaf won out over all the rest, though. There was just something that I couldn't resist, plus, since I knew whatever I baked, I wouldn't be able to eat, I wanted to do something that my husband wouldn't be able to resist, either. As a dark chocolate fiend, this appealed massively to him.

Ingredients:

For the mocha loaf
3 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
4 tablespoons butter, slightly salted & melted
5 tablespoons dark muscovado sugar
7 grams (1 packet) dry yeast
75 grams dark chocolate, roughly chopped
225 mls espresso, cooled
450 grams self-raising (self-rising) flour

Mocha Loaf

Instructions:

1. Activate the yeast in the water for about 5 minutes until foamy.
2. Place the flour, chocolate, cocoa and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer.
3. Mix with the butter, coffee and the yeast water until a soft dough forms.
4. Turn out onto a clean work surface and knead 10 minutes. Do not add flour to the work surface.
5. Grease a loaf tin with a bit of butter and shape the dough and slide it into the tin.
6. Cover the dough with a clean towel or plastic bag and let the dough prove until it doubles in size.
7. Preheat the oven to 220c / 430f.
8. Place the loaf in the oven and drop the temperature to 200c / 400f.
9. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.