An artistic Mud Cake!

I’m very excited because tomorrow I start my cake decorating course at Bankstown Community College! I’m going back to the basics to refine my artistic technique. Speaking of artists, last week was my beautiful Aunty Vickii’s 60th birthday and she is a very talented painter (feel free to applaud that magnificent segway- Anna Coren would be impressed).


She also happens to be obsessed with mice (Aunty Vickii, not Anna Coren). Not live mice though. The cute plastic/porcelain/material (etc) type. She has cabinets upon cabinets full of figurines. So, mice had to be incorporated into the design somewhere.
I steered clear of the cliché cheese wheel with mice running over it, and opted for a paint pallet adorned with mice. Cute!


Packet butter cake (tip: If using packet cake I always use Greens brand, it has the best flavour) topped with white chocolate ganache and chocolate marshmallow fondant!

I find some of the best recipes from the many food blogs I read daily, so I’ve decided to add to the phenomenon that is food blogs by including recipes in my blog posts.

In weeks past I headed over to my Grandparents house for Sunday afternoon tea. Sunday is my baking day. While others are worshiping in church, I am praying to the cooking gods that my latest recipe or cake design will work! So obviously for afternoon tea I came with a cake! Mud cake! My boyfriend loves mud cake. Sadly, he did not get to taste this one (much to his disgust).
After researching a few recipes on the net, and some from my trusty cake books, I came up with a recipe I liked (and included the ingredients, or lack thereof, that were currently in my cupboard).

And here it is...

Chocolate Mud Cake

· 1 ½ plain flour
· ½ cup self raising flour (most recipes called for 1 cup of each, I however only had ½ of self raising left! Lucky it was very good quality, but I would advise using 1 cup of each).
· 250 g dark chocolate
· 60 g coco powder
· ½ teaspoon bicarb soda
· 4 eggs
· 625 g sugar
· 250 g butter (always unsalted!)
· ½ cup milk
· 2 tablespoons of oil
· 2 tablespoons instant coffee (optional)

Ganache
· 250g of high quality chocolate
· 1/3 cup thickened cream

1. Preheat oven 160 C and line your baking pan (I used a deep 30cm round tin)
2. Sift flours, bicard and coco into bowl, add sugar. Mix together.
3. Combined butter and chocolate in a saucepan with ¾ cup of water, plus coffee. Stir over low heat until combined/melted.
4. Make a well in the centre of flour mix and gently stir in chocolate mixture.
5. Whisk milk, oil and eggs and add to mixture. Stir until smooth.
6. Bake for 1 hr 30 mins (depending on oven).
To make the ganache
1. Roughly chop chocolate
2. Add chocolate and cream to saucepan, stir over low heat until melted and combined
3. Set aside to cool until it is a spreadable consistency.

And there you have it! Lovely rich, moist mud cake and not that sponge-like cake that you often get from chain cake stores. And the worlds simplest ganache! If you’re short of time you can whack the saucepan full of chocolaty goodness into the fridge, alternately this recipe works well if you want to pour the ganache over the cake when almost cooled, for a gorgeous silky, shinny texture.

Let me know what you think of this recipe, or if you have any requests for upcoming recipe posts! I’m thinking something with coke and bourbon for my Daddy’s birthday.