I started to really love this co-cooking/baking part of this blog.. I get to taste extremely delicious food! For instance, today I had a lunch of a muddy, sticky chocolate cake with a hint of coffee taste. I had a sugar rush yes, but who cares? And you know what was the best part of it? I was in a great company, of my friend Malin Bäckman.

Malin is now graduating from Aalto (she has just presented her thesis last week) and we’ve known each other since I came here to Helsinki (we’ve been in the same master program, in the same class). Malin is Swedish-Finnish and she also has a bachelor degree in industrial design.

What I liked most while watching Malin and learning how to make this cake, was how smoothly she used the tools and how easily she made everything by simple hand tools. I switched to electric mixer for instance after a certain amount of time since I was not so effective in whisking or stirring by hand (most of the time). I asked if she plans at some point to buy more complicated tools but she says she is used to making everything with those hand tools (and as I wrote earlier, she really does look so!).

And how often does she bake? Well, apparently she participated in a “cake club” before, where everyone baked different types of cakes but there was 1 (very important) rule: the recipes always had to include chocolate and the baker ought to put more amount of chocolate than what it said in the recipe!). I think I could also quickly get used to being part of such a club! Nowadays, however, she does not bake that often – only when she feels like it, or for her guests, when she is going to visit a friend, and better yet, when she’s craving for something! She also baked a wedding cake for her sister about two months ago.

So, an easy but very tasty recipe is waiting for you to try! I can assure you, you won’t regret it! Bake this cake, and then invite your friends – unless you want to dip yourself inside the world of chocolate!

Oh, almost forgot to write. From this recipe on, I will also recommend you “soundtrack” for your baking/cooking process. I always listen to music while I am in the kitchen (unless I am following a video recipe), and I would like to share this with you as well. I hope the music adds yet another dimension to your process and create an even deeper kitchen story…

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Ingredients:

100 gr butter (firmer with this, we used leivonta margariini which makes it stickier, but Malin prefers firmer version)
2 eggs
1.5 dl white flour (actually, we used a mixture of puolikarkea vehnäjauho and erikoisvehnäjauho but either one can be used as a whole as well)
2 to 2.5 dl granulated white sugar
4 to 5 tbsp cacao (depends on how dark you want to have the cake)
1 tsp vanilla sugar
100 gr chocolate (we used the one that is suitable for baking)

Optional (for a variety of tastes):
Coffee (espresso, in this version we used it)
Chilli
Ginger

(New feature of the blog)
Soundtrack for baking:
Band: Soley
Album: We Sink
(listen to this one song and then find them on.. spotify maybe? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8qiR2YdbM)

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1. Melt the butter.

2. While butter is melting, add the chocolate to melt with it.

3. In a bowl, add eggs and sugar and whisk them a little (it does not need to be fully mixed but still a good whisk is needed).

4. Add melted chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and stir.

5. Add flour and stir the mixture.

6. Add cacao (as explained above, add 4 or 5 tablespoons, until you feel it’s dark enough). Stir.

7. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180C.

8. Add vanilla sugar and (if you are using) the extra flavours (like coffee as we did) and stir. The extra flavour is again as much as you like. Try to get a quite dense but still fluid cake batter (see the photo below).

9. Take a cake mould (20 cm), and grease or butter it. Pour the batter in the cake.

10. Put the cake in the oven, in middle rack. Bake it for about 30 minutes. After the first 20 minutes, start checking by sticking a knife etc. into the cake. Since it is a mud cake, you are not expected to have a fully clean knife when the cake is baked, but, as Malin says, it shouldn’t look floury either.

11. When the cake is baked, take it out of the oven and leave it to cool down for about 5-10 minutes. When it cools down, take it out of the mould and serve.

Malin recommends vanilla ice-cream to be served with the cake if it is still quite warm. Otherwise, the cake is good for several days in the fridge (and it tastes really great especially after a few hours in the fridge – especially the extra flavours).

Be prepared for a sugar rush! This is foodgasm!!