two types of goo

Today is my favourite's birthday. We celebrated with cake. Joe, who can't share the cake because of the chocolate, celebrated by trying to answer my phone, and broke the screen in the process. He says, in terms of health, our way of celebrating is more expensive. I disagree.

Anyway, Jimmy is allergic to eggs and nuts, so his birthday cakes are always experimental. Every year I've tried a different recipe, and every year I've watched him eat it feeling similar to how I used to feel when my niece was a baby and thought frozen peas were lollies - happy, and also really, really sad. You see, in baking, there really isn't a substitute for eggs. There are vegan recipes, which use vinegar and other stuff and say they're just like non-vegan cakes (they're not - they're the worst!), and there is 'no egg', which you mix with milk or water, and the cake comes out flat and a bit weird, and there's baking soda, which makes big holes and that's about it. It's very difficult for someone who makes everyone in her family's birthday cakes, and, between us, kind of prides herself on how they turn out. It makes her feel like Robert Downey Jr; cool in movies, but a Republican in real life. Ick.

I don't remember what last year's cake was, but I do remember that everyone who could eat egg bypassed it in favour of the other two on offer that day. But this year we will remember - this year, we may be on to something. I don't know why anyone else would want to bake a cake without eggs, but just in case, I'm going to share the recipe with you, because it has turned out YUM. It might give you the impression eggless cakes are okay - don't believe it. This is the exception; this is Amy Osbourne! I'm also going to link to the recipe from which I adapted it, Jamie Oliver's mega chocolate fudge cake (which I had never made before), and my FAVOURITE chocolate cake recipe Orangette's Winning Hearts and Minds cake (which I have made, was easy as anything, and so yum I wanted to eat the whole thing myself).

CHOCOLATE GOO CAKE adapted from Jamie Oliver

250g Whittakers (or whatever, just NOT CADBURY) 70% dark Ghana chocolate

175g butter

1 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp cocoa

pinch of salt

c. 1 cup mashed banana

c. 1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups of flour (possibly a little more, but the 2 cups I used was slightly too much)

c. 10 pieces of Whittakers milk chocolate with caramel

Now, Jamie says to throw it all (at varying stages) into a food processor. NICE IF YOU HAVE ONE. I don't, and crushing biscuits in the blender has taught me the blender don't like dry stuff. So I followed his alternative, and grated the chocolate by hand. It was an exercise in humility, love, and sweat. Humility, because I looked and felt ridiculous, scratching an entire block of chocolate against a grater. Love, because it took half and hour (and looked and felt ridiculous), but felt worth it because it was for Jimmy. (There's the second type of goo.) Sweat, because half an hour of grating something when you're unfit is a WORKOUT, my friends. Okay, you add the brown sugar, 1 tbsp of the cocoa, the salt and the butter to the chocolate (I didn't soften the butter properly; I should have), and beat until it's all mixed in. Then you beat in the banana and milk, bit by bit, until that's all mixed. Finally, stir in the flour. If the mixture looks floury at this point, add more milk.

I forgot to tell you the first bit. Preheat the oven to 160, and butter a baking dish (I think a cake tin would have worked just as well, and looked more like a cake than... I won't tell you. You'll know what I'm talking about when you see it.). Use 1 tbsp of the cocoa to coat the butter.

Put the mixture in the dish/tin, push in the bits of caramel chocolate here and there, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until set. If you test the cake, it doesn't matter if the skewer doesn't come out clean; you want it to be a bit jiggly. Also, you don't want the edges to get too crispy, because they lose the chocolate flavour.

Jamie says to serve with ice cream or creme fraiche, but I think it's best on its own; maybe with a bit of icing sugar dusted over the top if you want to put lipstick on that pig. Mine looks very different to Jamie's, but it tastes GOOD.

No photo because I can't find my camera (so also no photos of the birthday boy today), but instead, a song. Happy birthday, favourite.