Delicious Death

September 15 was Agatha Christie's 120th birthday. In celebration, the baking star Jane Asher created a cake based on the Delicious Death chocolate cake made for a birthday tea in A Murder is Announced.

"Impossible to make such a cake. I need for it chocolate and much butter, and sugar and raisins," says the housekeeper who is to make the cake in the book. "It will be rich, rich, of a melting richness! And on top I will put the icing – chocolate icing – I make him so nice – and write on it Good Wishes. These English people with their cakes that tastes of sand, never never, will they have tasted such a cake. Delicious, they will say – delicious."

Jane Asher says of her Christie-inspired concoction, "It has an intense, forbidding dark Belgian chocolate centre which is lifted by the unexpected sharp zing of its brandy-soaked cherry and ginger filling. The glorious assault on the senses doesn't end there: the cake is decorated with flecks of pure gold, sprinklings of crystallised rose and violet petals, and swirls of ganache piping. This paragon of a cake is as beautiful to look at as it is delicious – and deadly? – to eat."

You can find the recipe for this cake at Agatha Christie's website. I'm certainly going to try it, though I may veganify it. But veganism is too wholesome for such a poisonous endeavor... We shall see.