Mud Cake

Hi!
I used to wonder what would be the different between what they called as Mud Cake with other chocolate cakes. So, to find out, I made this once about a couple months ago. I made it out of a recipe from Exclusively Food which I found through Google (my number one source of recipes), with several changes.
Fortunately, the cake could feed not just anyone in our house back in Tangerang, but I could also had chance to gave a half of the cake to my brother. His wife returned to me to say that she and her sister like the cake. They said it's delicious. Alhamdulillah. I promised her to give the recipe, but we were too busy preparing to move to NZ. It took quite long time, I had forgot what kind of changes I made in the recipe.

Yesterday, I try to make this Mud Cake again from the same source, and again, made some changes to suit my liking.

When I make some adjustment to a recipe I found, I usually change the using of sugar and/or the food additives. Well, sometimes I make changes simply because I didn't have the needed ingredients on hand. Of course, that made me NOT always successfully made it, ha ha!

This is dede, who was fallen asleep on the carpet,
but woke up again after I bribed him
with the pan that I used to melt chocolate-->



Oh, one more important thing to be concern when you make cake but prefer NOT to use any food additives as baking powder or baking soda is the method. Food additives give short cut in making cake. With help of food additives, some long methods sometimes are not important to do any more. Take muffin as example. You don't need to use electric mixer or too much of eggs to raise a cake. But if you intend to make food additives-free cakes, you have to go through the complete or right procedures.
The complete procedure for sponge cake type is to whisk the eggs and sugar until as fluffy as you can get. Then fold in dry ingredients(flour and friends) and wet ingredients(milk and friends) alternately in three batches. Yep, you have to do little bit more work.
The result of most of additive-free cakes may not be high-risen ones like any other cakes with additives. But if the taste just as lovely and delicious, why bother using any of it, right?

Anyway, let's back to muddy Mud Cake. I don't know why they name it Mud Cake. The texture is not slimey-gooey like mud. My Mud Cake is more like ground or wet sand. Is it wrong? I don't know. But I would not really care about it when I eat it, because it taste good. The cake texture is really-really dense. I think this could be an option for chocolate lover who's looking for the alternative of brownies.


cracky..


..crackilicious.

One more thing before you read through the recipe, I made what I think as a lighter ganache. Well, if using milk instead of cream can be called 'lighter', then it is lighter *grin*. I only use 150 gram of chocolate, because it was all I have left on hand *another grin*. The cake itself IS full of fat of course. It has butter, oil, chocolate and sugar in it. But I replace buttermilk with yoghurt and reduce the sugar. I hope it helps a liiiiiitle bit to lighter it. If you afraid the ganache will be too runny, you may start with 1/3 cup of milk, and add more if needed.

Soooo, if your heart is broken, your boss is being a jerk, the traffic makes you vomit, or any of bad day, just go home and make one of this. Forget how much fat in it 'coz you deserve it!

Mud Cake

Ingredients:
250g dark chocolate
200g butter (if using unsalted butter, add 1/4 teaspoon salt with the butter)
3/4 cup water
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons plain flour
1/4 cup plus 2 teaspoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup yoghurt

Ganache, just melt everything above simmering water and stir to blend!
150g dark chocolate
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon salted butter

Directions::
- Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
- Line 20cm diameter round cake pan with non-stick baking paper. I use a springform pan for easy removal of the cake.
- Place 250g chocolate, butter, oil and water in a large saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally until they melted. Add salt and water, stir until they blend. Remove mixture from heat and allow to cool to lukewarm/room temperature. Add yoghurt in and stir well.
- Sift the flour and cocoa powder together into a large bowl.
- Whisk eggs and sugar with electric mixer until fluffy and white.
- Fold flour mixture and chocolate mixure to the egg alternately in three batches with spatula until well combined.
- Pour mixture into prepared pan.
- Bake for about 40 minutes to 1 hour.
- Insert a thin-bladed knife or wooden skewer into the centre of the cake to test whether it is cooked through. If the knife/skewer comes out clean or with moist crumbs (not gooey batter) attached, the cake is ready.
- Remove cake from oven and allow to cool in the pan.
- When the cake has cooled to room temperature, remove it from the pan.
- The top surface of the cake will probably have a crunchy crust, which you may wish to trim off. But I didn't.
- We turn the cake upside down to give a flat surface for icing.
- Then I just cut the cake into two. I use the bottom as the top to get flat surface on top.
- Spread the ganache on first piece of cake. Top it off with the other piece of cake. Don't stop. Just spread all over the surface with ganache until all covered up.
- Let it cool. You may put it in the fridge for faster result.
- After the ganache hardened, you can cut it with knife and enjoy.