A more tolerable Monday

It occurred to me at about 9pm last night that I had let yet another weekend go by without completing any Edmonds recipes. Deciding that was unacceptable, I put down my book and ran into the kitchen to throw something together for morning tea tomorrow.

Nobody likes Mondays much, even though they'r pretty much the same as any other day. It's just that they always arrive so suddenly, before you've even had a chance to enjoy the weekend. One way of making a Monday just a little more tolerable is to provide something nice for morning tea: a chocolate cake (p46) for example.


I quickly softened some butter in the microwave, then added sugar and beat until creamy. Then I beat in three eggs, one by one. Usually I do this process by hand, but using an electric beater makes for a nice light result (if you're prepared to put up with the whole 'clumping up around the beaters' thing).


In a separate bowl, I sifted together flour, baking powder and cocoa, then added the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with milk. I was quite pleased with the light fluffy mixture, and had every hope of it rising to a nice light cake.


After baking for the specified half-hour, I could see at a glance that the cake wasn't cooked - it was still pretty much liquid. I tried again after ten more minutes in the oven, and while the outside edges were cooked, the very centre was still gooey. I didn't want to dry out the edges so I gave the cake another five minutes then left it in the hot tin for another ten minutes. The centre was still looking slightly dodgy at this stage, but I hoped it would continue to cook while sitting in the hot tin.


It seemed to work: the centre looked firm enough when I turned the cake out onto the rack to cool. I covered it over and left it till morning.

I sacrificed my usual morning ritual (the kind in which a 'snooze' button is heavily involved) in order to whip up a quick icing for the cake. I used the chocolate butter icing recipe as a guide, but as I didn't have quite enough icing sugar on hand, it was quite a soft, sticky icing. Nice though!


As usual, the cake was well received, successfully inserting a minor positive into what was otherwise a pretty crazy day. Considering I'd worried it would be heavy and dense in the centre, I was quite surprised to find it reasonably light. It doesn't have a very strong chocolate flavour though, and I was glad I'd added extra cocoa to the icing to emphasise the flavour.

This is a pretty good cake. It might take a bit longer to cook than the recipe says, (or maybe not. That could be my oven - I'm not quite accustomed to its eccentricities yet) but it's easy to make and the result is pretty good. Slap on a nice rich icing (I don't recommend the basic one suggested in the recipe - it's quite sickly) and you've got a successful Monday-improver.