LoveCake

Pardon my lack of entries, I've been stuck between a mixture of working too much or sleeping too early. Well today was a momentous day in the Hons year - Defence of Thesis Day! ACB run theirs a little different to how mine was run last year. Path gave everyone 15 mins talking time plus 5 mins for questions and they were spread over two days. ACB gave everyone only 10 mins talking time, and all 20 (?) students were crammed into one day! Defences started at 9am sharp with Marlene, and ended at 3:30pm with Marina. I don't know if it actually ended at 3:30...I just assume it didn't.

Anyway, I was late to the seminar and ran into Devil's Childe James and somehow we decided I was going to make a cake for us all to eat/celebrate on Friday. But it couldn't be just any old cake, it had to be my chocolate cake or as Childe calls it, the LoveCake. There's nothing particularly special about the LoveCake. It's just an ordinary chocolate cake in my opinion, but Childe says that when he eats it, he can feel the love I put in when I cook it. O-kay...

Anyway, just for anyone who wants to know what LoveCake tastes like, here's the recipe.

Cake
125g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
1 egg, beaten
1.5 cups SR flour
3 tbs cocoa (I use Cadbury Bournville)
1 cup cold water

Pre-heat a fan-forced oven to 170 degrees celsius.
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the beaten egg, vanilla, and water to the sugar mixture and mix in. Try to make the lumps as small as possible, but it won't form a smooth paste.
Sift in the flour and cocoa straight onto the sugar mixture, alternately stirring until the mixture resembles a smooth brown paste.
Pour the mixture into a cake tin - I use a 20cm springform tin. This produces a cake that's about 5cm high after baking. Also, because the mixture is quite wet, I recommend covering the bottom of springform tins with foil to stop the mixture from seeping out.
Bake for 1 hour, cake is ready when a skewer comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for 30 mins, then cool on a wire rack.

When eaten warm straight out of the oven (as I have done), it tastes a bit like chocolate pudding. But since most people don't do that, after experimenting with various icing recipes, I've found that this chocolate frosting one works best with the cake. There's plently of frosting left over so if you want to be careful, make only 2/3 of the mix.

Frosting mixture
3 tbs cocoa powder
3 tbs hot water
125g butter at room temperature
250g icing sugar

Dissolve the cocoa powder into the hot water, stirring it to make a smooth paste.
Cream the butter into the cocoa mixture.
Cream the icing sugar into the cocoa/butter mixture until completely smooth.
Apply to cake when the cake is cool.
Garnish with strawberries for a brown/red colour and sour/sweet flavour contrast.

Since this is a frosting mixture, it doesn't set hard so you might want to store it for a little while in the fridge. Also, because the cakes are only about 5-10cm thick, I experimented once with making this a dual-layer cake with cream centre and a setting icing (i.e. one that went hard). It worked well (getting the icing all over it was a bitch though) but it was REALLY rich. I mean everyone still ate it and said it was good, but I sure felt sick after one slice!

So there you go. The recipe for my LoveCake. Eat it well and feel the love!