ROCKY ROAD TO MUD CAKE

I have a confession. A secret, dark, dirty confession…… I think I hate baking. There, I said it. I think I hate baking. I’m sure I'll change my stance at some stage, but right now, baking makes me feel all these feelings I don’t want to feel, like incompetence and ignorance and...and..and helplessness. Horrible.
When I’m cooking a meal, I can generally rescue it when it gets into trouble, but if I see my cake isn’t rising or my chocolate’s seizing or my scones are turning into rocks I just wring my hands and stare anxiously through the glass of the oven and then end up throwing it all away in a rage and starting again. Baking is much more scientific than cooking. There’s very little margin for error when you’re talking baking powder and aeration and the right-sized bloody cake pan.

Yes, anyway, for my brother's birthday this week I concocted a rocky road chocolate mud cake which I thought was a brilliant idea as some of my family likes rocky road. However, my bloody cake pan was too small so it rose way over the top of the pan and burned, while the centre was just barely cooked. I just cut off the top and continued, but now the top of the cake was extremely crumby so the rocky road topping kept falling off bringing a load of crumbs with it. When I was done tearing some of my hair out, I frenziedly threw together a batch of chocolate icing, literally poured the icing over, chucked the half-set rocky road on top and bunged it in the fridge and out of my sight. And it worked. And everyone ate it and was very happy, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Happy birthday bro!
Doesn’t mean I like baking though.


Rocky Road Mud Cake
Mud cake - Donna Hay, Simple Essentials Chocolate
Rocky Road topping - Good Taste Magazine

375g butter, softened
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
3 eggs
2 cups plain flour, sifted
½ tsp baking powder
2/3 cup cocoa powder, double sifted
200g dark chocolate, melted
¾ cup milk

Preheat oven to 160C. Place butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat 8-10 mins or until light and creamy. Gradually add the eggs and beat well. Fold through the flour, baking powder, cocoa and melted chocolate and stir in the milk. Spoon the mixture into a 22cm round cake tin lined with non-stick baking paper and bake for 1¼ hours or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool in the tin.

Topping:
80g mini baking marshmallows
¾ cup unsalted peanuts
2/3 cup shredded coconut
200g dark chocolate, melted

Combine ingredients and stir until well combined. Press firmly over cake (ice cake first if you used a too-small cake tin and so burned the top which you had to cut off which left a crumby-top). Place in the fridge for 1 hour until firm.