Chocolate Cake

So I was craving chocolate. and I had a day off tomorrow. and I had cocoa. and the rest of the family were snoozing away in front of the tv, leaving our lovely kitchen table free.

So I made cake. Chocolate cake. Yum.

Possibly the second cake I have ever made from scratch. And so easy!! No hand mixer or fancypants way of adding the ingredients, just mix up the dry and the wet ingredients separately and chuck em together.

Although, I only made half of Joy's recipe because I was afraid that I wouldn't have enough cocoa and that no-one would eat it and the cake would be left to mould in the fridge. Not that I don't try, but really, one can only eat so much cake.

Recipe taken from Joy the Baker's Organic Chocolate Cupcakes.

Chocolate Cake

- 1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour

- 1 cup white sugar

- 1/2 cup cocoa powder

- 1 tspn baking soda

- 1/4 tspn salt

- 1/3 cup canola oil

- 1 tspn white vinegar

- 1 cup cold water

1. Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease and/or Line(I still don't know which works best) the cake tin (I used a small loaf tin for the recipe - about 11cm x 20cm x 5cm) and set aside.

2. In a large bowl, sift the dry ingredients together. Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the oil, water, and vinegar (feel free to add some vanilla extract at this stage, I didn't have any).

4. Slowly whisk the wet ingredients being careful not to overmix. The mixture will be quite wet and this is OK. (It also had a few lumps and when I tasted it, seemed only a little bit grainy, but if you want to avoid this, just lessen the amount of sugar by a bit)

5. Pour into the cake/loaf pan and place in the oven for 45 - 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes clean.

6. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes then place on a wire rack to cool.

Honestly, I don't trust my oven and the temperature and I kept checking the cake every 10 minutes or so after the 30 minute mark. I was naive enough to think that I would only take about half an hour and when I pulled it halfway out of the oven the first time, it sank. Immediately. So don't do it folks. Just open the oven a little crack and try to stick the toothpick in. And don't take it out of it still kind of wobbles because it collapses really fast. A lot faster than one might think.

Cake mixture.

Lesson learnt: clutter in the background does not usually make for a nice photograph of food.

Mhmmm. Tasting the batter without the fear salmonella poisoning from raw eggs was guuudd.

Rush job. It was 11:30pm by the time I had lifted the cake out of the tin.