Can I have another piece of...

CHOCOLATE CAKE





*Theme music and jingle fade out and Mummy McTavish is standing in her spotless kitchen (that her personal assistant cleaned for her) smiling into the camera, head tipped slightly to one side Nigella-esque (have you noticed she does that??? it bugs me, I think she has an ear infection... she should get that looked at).*


Hi and welcome to this weeks episode of Mummy McTavish Can Cook. Today we will be baking a milk-free, egg-free, butter-free chocolate cake that I have discovered. I found the original recipe here but I read through the comments section and decided to edit the recipe straight up. Thankfully it worked -I am, after all, head chef of Chalet McTavish I should never have doubted myself. It's a very moist cake and I think if you are on a gluten free diet it would translate well to some of the GF flours. They tend to make a denser cake from when I've cooked with them which would work well with this recipe. That would make it free of all your major allergy and intolerance foods... good for a birthday cake to send to school! (just don't go and add a butter icing ☺)



Grease and line a 10 inch round cake pan *camera shows a perfectly lined pan belying the fact that the personal assistant took 2 goes to get it right since she cut the paper WAY too short the first time* and do make sure you double check that when your spring-form pan was last put away that the base was inserted correctly. *Mummy gives death-stare to personal assistant then smiles sweetly back at the camera*

From the pantry we will need *show ingredients already measured by previously mentioned personal assistant and sitting in sweet little ceramic dishes waiting to be thrown together so viewers believe the cake takes 3o seconds to put together instead of the real life time of 10 minutes*

375 g plain flour

300 g white sugar

100 g brown sugar

40 g cocoa powder

9 g baking soda

9 g baking powder

160 ml vegetable oil

475 ml water

30 ml white vinegar

10 ml vanilla extract

Now it really is a simple cake to put together so here we go...

1. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda and baking powder together and combine with white and brown sugars. Really, SIFT IT. NO, you can't get away with skipping it. JUST TRUST ME


2. In a separate bowl combine all the wet ingredients.


3. Dump all the wet ingredients straight in with the dry and mix on low speed until combined then increase speed and mix well.


4. Pour into a greased and lined 10 inch round pan. It will also work as mini muffins, Texas muffins, a bar cake, whatever)


5. Bake at 180C for 40 minutes or until a skewer in the middle comes out clean. Now do remember that time is not going to be accurate for any oven except mine since it's currently marching to the beat of it's own drum.


6. Cool the cake in the pan before turning out and icing.

Here's some I prepared earlier *flashes her dazzling smile at the camera*

*shot fades out as Mummy McTavish can be heard screaming "Who ate the mini muffins I made for the show? I told you DON'T EAT THE MUFFINS but what do you do? YOU EAT THE MUFFINS! I'm a celebrity, I don't need this..." fades to credits*

NO, Wolf is not the personal assistant referred to here! I know you were thinking it, but this is all made up!