Me & Moha Finally Did It…I meant Baking a Homely Chocolate Cake

Sprinkled with Walnuts Cauz I Love Dem

Get your head out of the perversity that surrounds you, look-up and listen to what I have to say – Me and Moha had been trying to cook our cake for some time now. The first attempt had been gastronomically traumatic. The batter was left uncooked and the crusting was a bit too much. This year's 26th January weekend meant we could try again, prepared with some failure-makes-you-better wisdom. Families and colleagues trusted with making the final judgment in our favor!

This time, we made some adjustments, like:

- maintaining the microwave temperature at 150 degree Celsius rather than 180
- ensure the batter was whipped more. We plan to get a blender later to help us here
- filling baking bowl minimally to ensure we had more cooking time and space for the rising dough 

The big challenge was making the frosting/coating - NOT Pastry Filling
We had zeroed in on two approaches, namely:

- making a frosting by adding castor sugar to egg whites and whisking them crazily
- mixing chocolate compound into butter and waiting for the blend to become more creamy
- mixing milk chocolate compound and cocoa with some dairy cream

We chose the last option, trying to stay away from buttery indulgences that could straight to our middle-ageing waists. Though Moha could use some more meat on her bones, am not trying to gain mass without any underlying muscles and hence, the self-executed butter cut-down approach.

Learning Our Lessons

We had made small mental notes and tried to scavenge across multiple recipes, from the absolutely Mediterranean ones to our own self-crowned culinary king, Sanjeev Kapur. Some finer points emerged that we had obviously missed in our first effort. We had greased the baking can but did not dust it with the dry dough. We had used the wrong type of baking bowl. The sides and the bottom was fixed and this meant we had to knife-out the baked thing – this was a serious problem. This time, we got a baking utensil that had a free-moving, removable base, making the entire process easier.

Modifying the Layered Approach

Online assistance was heavily biased towards the approach of making a big cake and then cutting through the middle. This horizontal dissection meant you had two layers to be combined, cemented with the frosting, coating or pastry cream in between. We wanted to simplify the sandwiching approach. We made two rather thin cakes which also ensured that the ingredients were cooked fully, from within. We turned the cakes upside down and sandwiched them with the chocolate frosting. The cake was smeared with the chocolate coating along the top, sides and bottom for comprehensive coverage. We used the dried nuts minimally as it seems the norm is to avoid overdoing this in cakes that have a gooey, chocolate coating.

Things Worked Our Rather Well

Not boasting but yes, for caking novices, we performed rather well. Observations that led to me to this conclusion:
- Batter was slightly crumbly around the edges and top. We wanted this
- Batter was cooked from within, giving it a brownish, well-roasted aura. We love this
- Chocolate smearing was a rather playful process. We took turns to do this
- We could create some variations: 2-layered cake, single-layer affair and cup-sized cakey thing
- No issues like over-smoked crusts. Lovable baking aroma rather than a burnt smell
- Cake was effortless to be eased out of its baking bowl
- Moisturizing the cake with some milk was easy…the droplets were absorbed right away

Suggested Reading: DIY Homemade Dark Chocolates by Moha - Real Pics!