I don’t really cook… never had the need to. I love watching cookery shows… and sifting through recipes. Mom says that is because I do have little cook inside me trying to claw its way outside and get snappy with some dishes. She can say that… she loves cooking and is an awesome cook. Though I can cook if I want to, I don’t have the patience for it.
With mom insisting that I should once in a while step in to the kitchen and don the apron for some actual cooking instead of to just filch whatever goodies she prepares, I decided to bake a chocolate cake. Now, long back we had this cute little round electric oven that looked like a flying saucer… and in those days we made a lot of baked goodies. As a kid, I remember baking tiny tarts and little cupcakes. All that stopped years back… the spaceship oven stopped being reliable and the microwave was a terrible baking oven, we got an OTG and it just became an extra shelf to hold snacks and such. :)
Some 10 years back, I did bake a cake in it for my brother’s birthday, and some nankhatai cookies. After that the OTG has never known any baking… it has done a bit of grilling and roasting of chicken in it… but that’s about the use it has seen.
So today I emptied the oven of all the snacks and dusted and aired it. Then I checked the fridge and the pantry to see if I had any of the ingredients for making a chocolate cake. Luckily, there was some cocoa, flour, baking powder, eggs and butter. I wasn’t going to make anything fancy… just a simple chocolate cake. For a long time I have wanted to do some cake decoration… that is what I am good at… creative stuff… my experience of sculpting with clay could easily be translated to some sculpted frosting. I have quite a steady hand and am not bad at henna decorations, so piping the frosting would be a piece of cake too. ;)
Unfortunately, I had none of the ingredients required to prepare the icing… except icing sugar. I wanted to make marshmallow fondant and I did search the supermarket for marshmallows to no avail! :(
I whipped up the batter and then realized that I didn’t even have a decent cake pan… but, the batter was ready and I had to see this through. I decided to use the pie-dish as a cake pan! And in went the batter for a session of fragrant baking. The kitchen smelt heavenly with the aroma of the cake crust and even papa was of the opinion that it smelt good. The cake came out nice and fluffy and I was quite happy that it wasn’t the disaster I had expected it to be.
With some cooking chocolate, condensed milk and butter, I made something that resembled a chocolate ganache and coated the cake with it and also layered it inside. Stuck the cake in the fridge for the ganache to set and then I got to making up something that could be pulled of as ‘frosting’. I had a pack of strawberries and some black grapes… sliced them up for the decoration… then I used some icing sugar, condensed milk, cream and a wee bit of food colouring to make some fake frosting which was more syrup than icing. Well, I had no choice so I just went with the ‘flow’!
Here is the Melting Chocolate Cake!
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