Goomba birthday mud cake a recipe and a cake filled rant!.

My son turns 16 today! Each birthday they get to choose a few of their favourite things like breakfast, dinner and what kind of cake. It's not enough to be a favourite flavour, it can be whatever high falutin' thing they can dream up and I'll do my best to realise the dream lol. One of Ben's previous cakes was the candy corn croquenbouche for example which has garnered quite a few hits on my blog.
This time he has requested a Goomba from Mario Brothers. the angry looking brown mushroom. I am using a mud cake recipe I have had for 15-20 years. It is a big favourite which I got from my sister who got it from someone else etc. It was written into an old spiral bound recipe book that has since disintegrated and this orange page is the sole survivor I think. I have written over it twice since but I think it is time it was rewritten properly lol.

It is a GREAT cake. It is rich and moist and fine textured, light and yet dense. and nothing artificially tasting about it unlike the commercial batch made supermarket mud cakes. This has been a standby for birthdays, weddings, anniversarys, special occasions, you name it, this takes the cake!
After the mixing and pouring comes the scraping and licking! The mixture is fairly runny and easy to pour.

This is the picture I used and the cake cut ready to ice.

And the fnal product.

Not the best, the ganache didnt' want to be glossy and smooth, the licorice ended up in little bits not strips so had to be moulded for the eyebrows but eh, the birthday boy was happy. Can't you tell? ROFL!

My Sweet Sixteen

The Recipe (in case you couldn't decipher the scribbles above)

Chocolate Mud Cake

125g butter

1cup sugar                Cream these two together

2 eggs                       Add to the creamed mixture

2/3 cup cocoa

1/2 cup boiling water  Mix these two together then add gradually to creamed mixture

1 cup milk

2 Tbsp vinegar           Combine milk and vinegar

1 3/4 cups plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp bi-carb soda

1pinch salt                  Sift these dry ingredients together

Alternate adding flour mix and milk mix to the creamed mixture until well combined.

Pour batter into lined or greased and floured cake tin.

Bake for 30mins at 180C

I made a double batch for my largest tin but I could have made it a triple batch and then I it wouldn't have cracked so much and been a bit thicker, but it was fine for my purposes.

You can see the texture of the cake in these scrap pieces. You can ice it with butter cream, ganache or lends itself really well to whipped cream as it isn't over sweet. I ended up using bread flour not cake flour for this so the texture isn't perfect as I am gradually getting rid of the wheat from the house. That's a whole 'nother story for another day!

And now my little storm in a tea-cake

Donna Hay Vanilla Cupcakes seen at Coles today

1. Pricepoint, Vanilla cupcakes. $8 Really?

2. Instructions. Add butter, AND eggs AND milk? What does that leave? Flour, sugar and vanilla? Is it really THAT hard to measure flour and sugar? And at $8 what kind of special magical ingredients are there anyway?

3. Ingredients. Absolutely nothing special or magical there. Only the cheapest of ingredients.

It must be the magical name.....

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