I have a recipe to share with you. It gets a high reccomendation from the J Boy. Tonight I literally found him on all four licking the leftover crumbs off the floor. I have no confidence that my floor was fit to eat off, let alone be licked.
We made a mudcake for The Accountant’s birthday. It wasn’t really made of mud, J Boy had quickly reassured Grandma when he was telling her about the cake. It was just pretend mud that tasted good.
I got the recipe from my new favourite cookbook of the hour, Janelle Bloom’s “Fast, Fresh & Fabulous”.
The Accountant LOVES mudcake. I’m ashamed to say I’d never made a mudcake from scratch. Mainly because it has soooo much chocolate in it, which is never a good thing for the hips, and not economical. But for a special occassion, it seemed like a great time to make one, and Janelle’s looked scrumptious.
Janelle’s recipe used expresso, but a lot of our guests didn’t like coffee so I emailed Janelle asking what I should substitute. Proving that she is such a super nice lady for real, not just on TV, she emailed me back within half an hour saying to just use boiling water. Since The Accountant does like coffee, I made two cakes, one with, one without. In the end, I probably could have made one big slab with coffee in it because it was only a subtle flavour.
Janelle’s Favourite Mud Cake
300g good-quality dark chocolate 200g butter, chopped
1/4 cup strong black expresso coffee
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup SR Flour
Thick cream to serve. (I forgot to whip mine up before the party, d’oh!)
1. Preheat oven to 160C, no fan. Grease and line base and sides of 20cm round cake pan. (Mine was 4cm deep and worked ok.)
2. Chop 200g of the choc. Place chopped choc, butter and coffee in a heatproof, microwave safe bowl. Microwave, uncovered for 2-3 mins on High/100%, stirring every minute with a metal spoon until smooth. Add cocoa while warm, whisk until smooth.
3. Whisk in vanilla, sugar and eggs. Sift flour over the chocolate mixture and stir gently to combine. Roughly chop the remaining 100g of choc.
4. Pour half the mixture into the prepared pan. Sprinkle half of the choc over the cake mixture. Pour remaining mixture of the choc, top with remaining choc. Bake cake for 55-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre has moist crumbs clinging. Stand in pan to cool completely.
Chocolate Icing
200g dark choc, chopped
1/2 cup thickened cream
Combine choc and cream in microwave safe bowl. Microwave uncovered on high/100% in 1 min. bursts, stirring every min. with a metal spoon until smooth. Pour icing over the cake allowing to drizzle down the sides. (Wait for the icing to cook a bit for a thicker consistency before pouring.)
3 Comments
My goodness! Those cakes look awesome.
You would not believe the mud cake craving I have right now…
The pretend mud was apparently a huge disappointment but the chocolate went down a treat! JBoy is such a scream!