Chocolate Mud Cake

I was born on an auspicious day, Makara Sankranti! This year Sankranti has deviated from its ususal 14th to 15th... No holiday on my Birthday! Yesterday night post dinner after kids had gone to bed, got Abbas into helping me prepare a cake. Well, I hesitantly asked Abbas and to my surprise (read SHOCK!), he said I myself was planning to bake a cake for you... I had already decided it was going to be Divya's Chocolate Mud Cake the day I laid my eyes on the pics! I was chopping chocolate and they were disappearing into my helper's mouth! I wanted to shoo him away. While I was busy melting chocolate, preparing sugar solution... his highness was chatting with his Bro and was pitching in once in a while to check if I needed help! I asked him to measure a cup of flour and mix with cocoa powder and baking soda. He inverted my flour container to pour it into a cup and almost another cup of flour spilled into the mixing bowl. I put all the flour back into the container and meausred myself, threw in other ingredients and he performed the most difficult act of mixing them together! And before I knew it, he had disappeared from the kitchen. I let the cake bake in the oven and went to bed. Early morning, I woke up and decorated the cake by cutting out stencils and dusting with icing sugar. All thanks to Suma coz I got this brilliant idea from her blog!

Here goes the recipe to dive into Chocolate Niravana as Divya rightly said:

Recipe source - Lakshmi Nair

Ingredients

Flour – 1 cup

Baking soda – ½ tsp

Cocoa Powder – ¼ cup

Sugar – ¾ cup

Boiling water – ¼ cup

Instant Coffee Powder – 1 tsp

Dark Chocolate – 125 gms,grated or chopped (I used Milk chocolate of Selbourne brand)

Butter – 125 gms,unsalted

Eggs – 2

Method

1. In a mixing bowl, mix together sugar, boiling water and coffee powder till the sugar dissolves. [If you are using granular sugar, it wouldn’t dissolve completely and that is fine]

2. In another pan melt the butter and add the chocolate,make sure the pan is on low heat. In about 2-3 minutes, it will melt completely and become a chocolaty mass. Switch off the flame.

3. Add this to the sugar mix and mix everything together with a wooden spoon. Let it cool and come to room temperature.

4. Meanwhile, prepare the baking tin-grease and line an 8’ round cake tin.

5. Preheat oven to 175C.

6. Sift together flour, baking soda and cocoa powder.

7. When the chocolate mix is cool, beat in the flour mix little at a time-you could use a wooden spoon or a hand mixer.

8. After all the flour has been mixed in, add the eggs one at a time and beat well.

9. Transfer to the prepared baking tin and bake for 30-35 minutes[it took exactly 35 minutes in my oven].

10. Cool the cake in the tin and then invert to a cooling rack.

11. Using a sieve, dust powdered sugar on top and slice into wedges.

Serve with a dollop of Chocolate ice-cream and transport yourself into Chocolate Nirvana!!

And that's the way I cut out my stencil: