Chocolate cake

Ingredients
chocolate
butter
sugar
self raising flour
2 eggs

Equipment
bowl
spoon
food mixer

baking tin (see notes)
baking paper (optional)

oven:
time in oven: 25-45 mins (see notes)

preparation time:
making cake mix

This is a minimal recipe. At the end, I suggest some additional or substitute ingredients.

Cooking process

chocolate and butter over boiling water. Take off heat. Add sugar. Beat in eggs. Beat in .
Line the bottom of the baking tin with baking paper (this is optional, but makes it a lot easier to get the cake out afterwards). into the tin.
Put the tin in the oven. This needs to cook for at least 25 minutes (see notes).
After taking cake from oven, leave for a bit, then turn the cake out from the tins and let it cool. This minimum chocolate cake has no icing, but was still nice to eat!

Other ideas

There seems to be a problem with timing for chocolate cakes. I was experimenting using my new Bundt tin (hence the hole in the middle of the cake!) and this makes a less flat cake. My Victoria sponge recipe (which works) takes 25 minutes. But my Dutch apple cake (which also works) takes 45 mins. It must depend on the size and shape of the tin. It must also depend on the moisture of the ingredients (apples hold water). However, many chocolate cake recipes have twice the amount of ingredients, so are large, and would take more cooking, and yet they give 25 minutes cooking time. They also use various other ingredients (see next note) with extra moisture, and still give 25 minutes. I would have thought this would also take longer to cook. I can only imagine that most people like heavy, dense, fudgy chocolate cakes, rather like a brownie. These are rather under-cooked (but uncooked cake mix tastes nice!) But there are problems with turning out (especially with a Bundt tin...) I did 45 mins with my Bundt cake version. The outside was a bit crispy (definitely not burnt) and the inside soft and cake-like. But not brownie-like. I prefer this, but you can cook it for 25 mins if you prefer.
In researching chocolate cake recipes, I came across extra ingredients, such as sour cream or a small cup of expresso. One recipe melted the chocolate by actually mixing it with hot water. These would add to the moisture level, and might affect cooking time. They all insisted on cocoa powder (sometimes "good quality cocoa powder!") presumably to make it taste more chocolatey. I think that cocoa powder makes things tastes of cocoa rather than chocolate, but that's a personal prejudice. I decided to strip down the recipe as far as I could, to see if it worked. And I really think it's better like that!
There may be other variants, such as using ground almond. There are many cake recipes, and you presumably can make them into chocolate cake recipes by adding chocolate. My basic cake here is a Victoria sponge.
The recipes also all insisted on dark chocolate, good quality natureally, over 70 percent. I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate (because I was finishinh stuff up), and it seemed to work.
I haven't used icing on this cake. You can obviously add anything you want. Butter icing (butter and icing sugar mixed together) or "proper" icing. You can flavour/colour it with cocoa powder. You can buy chocolate "frosting" from the supermarket. Or you can melt some more chocolate and pour it over the top.