Emergency Chocolate Cake

MMMmmm, cake.....
MMMmmm, chocolate... So: in just over one hours time, your house will be entertaining 6 children and 4 adults.... i have held birthday parties with fewer guests than this.
But the weather is poor, kids need to play and you can't 'not invite' so and so...
you'll have to invite them all to yours.

Believe me, this is quick and easy. Providing you have a stock cupboard with Cake ingredients.
7oz plain flour
2 tble spoons cocoa powder
1 t'spoon bicarb soda
1 t'spoon baking powder
4oz caster sugar
2 tblespoons Golden Syrup
2 eggs (i only had ONE EGG left!! so i just put one in, and it was fine)
1/4 pint corn oil (i keep a bottle in the cupboard especially for this emergency cake)
just under 1/4 pint milk

Topping / Filling: Some Icing Sugar... a tub of emergency frosting if you have any... good quality chocolate to melt... cream to whip...any combinations of whatever you have really!


Bung all the ingredients in a bowl and mix by hand or machine - it will be pretty runny.
I greased and lined two 8inch sandwich tins. Fill half each with the mixture.
Cook for about 30mins on 160 / 325 (check at 25mins, my oven is pretty rapid)
TThhhhheee lightest sponge ever! and no butter, and ONE egg! surely it shouldn't work? but it does....

The icing was all experimental with what i had left in my kitchen. half a tub of shop bought frosting in the middle - but you could whip up some cream or make some butter icing? it doesn't need much as the sponge is so good alone :)

For the top, i melted a small bit of butter with 2/3rds of a half eaten bar of dark 70% chocolate and literally the dregs of a packet of icing sugar - whisked by hand... And poured it over the cake, allowing it to drip in abandon. I even put this cake in the fridge for 20mins so the guests didn't think it was 'still warm' and 'just made'.

I am a little house proud and did wash the bowl before they arrived (you could hide the dirty utensils in a cupboard if you're in a hurry)

I was just sweeping the floor as they arrived....

Emergency! and oh sooooo good x

(a recipe given to me as a teenager the Mum of a good friend, an adapted for circumstances)

We three cakes...

We three cakes from KirstyFish are...
I made the mistake of telling my Mother and my Nanna..."I've made the Christmas Cake"
So they both asked if they could have some. Of course, i am a generous lady and they can have some of the cake. But as i stood looking at the ROUND cake i had made i became a little dejected. My plans for a Merry Snow Scene decoration were not going to happen - the cake, becoming 'the cakeS' were going to leave little room for decorative play. Never mind. My cake decorating skills leave MASSES to be desired anyway. It isn't my forte. It isn't my 'area' of any skill or expertise. It was time...... to call in the professional>>>>> armed with a 'Charlie and Lola' apron and a whole lotta creative Diva, this 5 yr old's work was sterling.

To maintain the almond theme (Amaretto soaked cake) we started with white marzipan - only a thin layer. Thin wasn't a 'taste' choice - you must remember, i had bought the ingredients to ice just the ONE cake and 3 were taking up a little more ingredient than expected.

And the Ready-Roll icing was a similar story.

Please don't underestimate how long this simple process took me. Oh My Lord.

The able assistant lost patience after the icing sugar and rolling pin stage so i was (thankfully) on my own at this point.

Then i realised EACH cake needed a cake base / board.... and in a moment of sheer brilliance i managed to find 2 cardboard packages from that evenings dinner and cut them up into the right shapes for each cake. We had a ready made pizza base so that was perfect for the half moon shapes, once wrapped in foil.

The cakes sat in tins for days like this. I am no domestic goddess NOR am i at all into Cake Decorating... but they worked out something like this:

Wide tartan ribbon around the edge of all of them. Left over Jane Asher gold stars from a previous cheat cookery project....

All strategically placed for a minimal effect. And the last cake had some gummy heart sweets placed in one corner.

I am winning no prizes with these BUT i guarantee, the taste of these cakes will have the consumer totally forgetting the rather basic topping.

What's a girl to do? I went from having one big round cake, to 3 small odd shaped cakes.

It goes to show, you can have your cake and eat it too. Just don't think about how it 'looks' for too long.

And i leave you with this photo of Chef Extraordinaire.... because i have a sort of weird semi-smug Nigella look on me here - maybe it's that double chin????

Anyone for a few dieting posts come 2010?

x mmmm, cake!

Time to Ice THE cake??

Is it? Is it? Is it?
It has been sitting in the tin for about 5 weeks now.
Fruit steepd for hours in alcohol at the pre-cooking stage...
All families have there own secret recipes so i won't 'share' mine with you, unless you beg. Molasses! i have weird memories of this blackest, gloopiest, strangest of treacle-like substances. I like my cake to have a real heaviness to it - density! - blackness.
Lots of fruit. Definately no nuts in this cake for me. NO glace cherries (sorry, they are a pet hate of mine but i don't want to cause Glace lovers any offence)



Slowly, i have added Amaretto to the well wrapped Cake, sat in it's tin, waiting patiently...
I am not a great Amaretto fan (what am i saying? not at all 'a fan' in fact) but all the girls in my family love it so i thought i'd give it a try.

SO..... Is it time to Ice the Christmas Cake yet? Is it? Is it? Is it? A

Advent starts next week........ !!!! :)

Choc Chip Loaf with lotsa love x x x

This is definately a cake with love in the ingredients. It is a recipe i first used when i was 17yrs old and the first EVER recipe i wrote down in my new RECIPE BOOK - i had a journal that i was given and decided to fill in with my favourite foods.
So MRS CHRISTY (crazy mum of a school friend) used to make this cake and we'd all sit round her kitchen table and drink tea whilst eating large slabs of this delicious loaf.... Now, i mainly eat it on my own as no-one else round me likes cake!! How could i give birth to a child who doesn't "do" cake?
4oz butter
60z caster sugar
1/2 t'spoon the best vanilla essence
2 eggs
6oz self-raising flour
1/4pt single cream
40z chocolate chips - plain or milk, up to you.

Loaf tin is buttered and floured - ready. Oven is on at 180c.
I didn't have any choc chips in the cupboard (i must have eaten them on some lonely, desperate evening) so i bashed up a bar of quality chocolate. Pop the chunks in a bag and bash them ON A BOARD! till they are small pieces.

Cream together the butter and sugar - as with most cakes. then add the vanilla essence. I think it is worth spending a little more on good quality ingredients... it just increases the taste of your cookery efforts x

Beat in eggs one at a time with spoonfuls of flour to stop any curdling... then add all the flour and mix gently.

Add the cream, gently.

Stir in the choc chips and mix well to distribute.

Pour into your prepared loaf tin.

Make sure there is enough left in the bowl for 'lickage' - and 3 spoons / spatulas.

1=you

1=child

1=dog... (you don't want to share that spoon once the dogs had a slobber on it)

Bake in CENTRE of well warmed oven for 45mins - or still it is risen and firm to touch.

Not teaching grandmothers to suck eggs, promise, but don't go opening oven doors half way through cooking a cake.... the cake drops and will be ruined (something to do with the release of Carbon Dioxide etc...)

It should slip easily out of the loaf tin if you buttered and floured it!?... then cool on a wire rack for a while. Why on a wire rack?... so the bottom doesn't go soggy x (not everybody knows these things)

Dust the top with icing sugar....

EAT.... drink tea...

The world is a better place x