I want to have my cake and eat it too. And by that I mean, I want my girlfriend to make me some cake and then I eat it. The only problem with this is that Rita, who is a cake-baker par excellence, is around about 1,200 miles away, and even with airmail, that cake is going to go stale.
So she made the radical suggestion that I bake a cake myself. Having used an oven before, and achieved a C in Food Technology at school, I was not one to back down from this challenge.
That’s not to say it went well.
First, I carefully (skim) read the instructions that had been laid out for me:
“100g chocolate
3 big tablespoons of cocoa powder (afterthought: maybe not so big)
170g sugar
170g butter
170g flour
4 eggs
no salt if using salted butter (if not, add a pinch)
1 level tsp baking powder
Chop the chocolate bar into nice chunks. Preheat your fan-oven to 160ish degrees (170C if using a normal oven). Grease a loaf tin or a glass bowl and set it aside. In a bowl, blend butter and sugar until fluffy. With a whisk (or a blender, I suppose), add eggs, one at a time (wait until it's incorporated until you add the next one). Mix flour, salt, baking powder and cocoa powder, add to the butter and egg goo and mix. Mix in the chocolate chunks. Spoon batter into the prepared loaf tin/glass bowl, bake for about an hour.
If the top looks like it's getting too dark, cover with a lid for a bit. Test with a narrow knife or a toothpick for doneness. If you stick it in and it comes out clean it's done. Let the cake cool for about 15 minutes, flip it out of the bowl, let it cool some more. Nom.”
I then set to the mission with all the zeal of a hero from romance literature, which would have been appropriate had the task not required specific measurements and precise processes to complete.
Clouds of flower in the eyes later, I establish that 170g of butter is an obscene amount and pile the sugar on top.
I have a Tesco Value blender which, in its instructions, advises use for periods no longer than 45 seconds, upon which time it is prone to spontaneous combustion or failure. The thought of its shuriken-like appendage melting off its moorings and shattering the glass mixing bowl in my hands would not deter me however, nor would the very real and offensively acrid smell of burning plastic. I pureed that butter and sugar to a consistency akin to ectoplasm and forged on.
I remember at this time to turn on the oven and grease the bowl, requiring more butter, which makes my arteries forcibly retract from my hands in an attempt to prevent me from subjecting them to the torture I was under orders to design.
I then set about lobbing eggs like hand grenades against the side of the glass bowl and then practicing my field surgery skills by picking out bits of shattered eggshell. By the fourth egg there is a long slew of egg-white goo stretching from the mixing bowl to the empty, broken shells a foot away in a bowl of their own.
This mess is compounded by the adding of flour and baking powder, making it seem like my kitchen was inhabited by a troll with a cold and a coke addiction. Gratuitous paper towelling later, and it was time to spoon in the cocoa.
“Heaped” apparently does not equate to mountainous, but that’s hindsight talking. I dump my glorious brown spoonfuls into the mix and immediately add the solid, milk chocolate chunks. Before mixing.
With my temperamental blender a loose cannon at the best of times, it’s banshee-like wails at the interference of these chunks meant the mixing process had to be done with a fork. The result was lumpy and of pitch-like consistency, until I once again braved the blender and obliterated the last of the stubborn pockets of cocoa.
Splatter-shot now once again required cleaning and I foolishly left the blender stood upright in the mix. It’s see-saw descent onto the kitchen side made sure to include maximum black-brown discharge across the shiny white surface, doubling the task of cleanup.
With the bowl now full of the chunky brown mixture and several pieces of cutlery smothered in floury, bitter crème, I put the cake into the oven and spent 20 of the 50 minutes cooking time in repairing the damage this foul invention had wrought on my kitchen.
When it finally emerged from its slow roasting, the cake had risen and hardened like a bakery product. I was stunned.
Taking it out of the oven to cool, and later popping it crisply from the bowl, I was even more surprised to find the mayhem that had ensued was now so orderly and cake-looking. And cake smelling. The chocolate aroma was so strong I could smell it upstairs, and now taking a small piece at point blank range and taste-testing it, I found it so overpowering I could still taste the fragment 40 minutes later at the gym (which I felt the need to visit, having seen what goes into such a creation).
Finally, after two hours of cooling and marvellous Sunday dinner, the cake was cut and had with tea. Thankfully, it’s immense density of flavour had mellowed somewhat and the slice was eminently edible. My dad told me to pass on the message that it’s “fantastic” and argued that when Rita had given the recipe, one couldn’t say anything else.
He took two pieces with him as we went off to London for the week, and I have half of it still in my fridge awaiting consumption. Were it not for the milk chocolate chunks however, I would be sure my overzealous cocoa portions would have made it unbearably strong. Nevertheless, I count it as a success for my girlfriend, and write this as a formal endorsement of her food-blogging capacity. If a busy and culinarily incapable man such as myself can enjoy the recipes found herein, so can you .
