NTC 2: I Hate Chocolate Cake
Hello and welcome to number 2 of the No Talent Club, an email newsletter all about food, written by Pete Hindle. It’s called the No Talent Club because cooking is actually really easy - it just takes practice. This week I want to talk about the worst flavour of cake, chocolate.
Eating a chocolate cake is like taking two great things - chocolate and cake - and smushing them together to make something not quite as good as either of them. You can have a cake that tastes of something a bit like chocolate, if chocolate was also full of eggs and wheat and maybe some cream. It doesn’t have that beautiful mouthfeel of chocolate, that soft ’crack!’ when you bite in.
The other reason I hate chocolate cake is that sometimes I get blinding migraines, and chocolate cake is definitely a trigger. If you’ve never had a migraine, imagine a terrible hangover that means you have to lie down with your head under a pillow, because if you move or hear anything you might throw up. This is definitely too much pain for a slice of cake that I find only moderately delicious at best.
And yet, chocolate cake is the number one cake that people ask me to make. Usually for birthdays. How can you say no to a birthday cake request? And so, when this happens, I make the following cake:
Chocolate Cake, aka Depression Cake
Ingredients
195g white flour
60g cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
150g sugar
145g dark brown sugar (or just use more regular sugar if you don’t have a brown type)
120ml olive oil
355ml coffee (this is a lot, so feel free to make one strong coffee and water it down)
1 tablespoon (15 ml) cider vinegar or white vinegar
Instructions
Heat oven to 180 degrees. Prepare the baking tin by lining it with baking paper and greasing the sides. If you’re feeling lazy, like I often am, just fold the baking paper up the sides.
Mix together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and granulated sugar in your mixing bowl. Add brown sugar and olive oil, and whisk to combine. Add coffee and vinegar and whisk until smooth. Yes, the coffee can be hot. It’s going to be essentially a big wet puddle of chocolate-smelling cake.
Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, but be prepared to bake it longer. Test to see if the cake is ready by sticking a cocktail stick in the middle. If it comes out wet then it’s not ready.
General notes on this cake:
If you want to make this cake look fancy, pour melted chocolate over the top when you take it out of the oven. You can also sprinkle cake decorations over the top if you want to make it look really fancy.
This cake has no eggs or butter, so it’s suitable for vegans. Eggs usually bind a cake together, but this recipe uses the chemical reaction between the vinegar and the baking powder (I think?). Correct me if I’m wrong, chemists.
This cake can be really soft, so expect it to be a bit crumbly.
A Quick Note on Chocolate…
While I might hate chocolate cake, I really like chocolate bars. If you’re looking for a good bar of chocolate, I’m going to recommend the Tony’s Chocolonely brand, because you can buy them in a supermarket. They’re fair trade and solidly anti-slavery, which is important as a lot of coffee and chocolate will use slavery in their production. I know, I didn’t give a shit about all this fair trade stuff for years, and now I’m telling you about it like it’s something to consider? I guess getting older made me think about how I would feel if I had to live my life stuck on a farm with no hope of change.
If you’re already eating nice chocolate, or if you’ve been eating the Tony’s stuff already, there’s a lot of nice websites and shops out there. Try a chocolate of the month club, where they’ll send you a bunch of chocolates, or find a small chocolate shop and keep going back. Look for things that win awards, like this from Hogarth’s Chocolate, or that sound like something you want to eat - for me, this stone-ground cinnamon chocolate is irresistible because of the taste and the texture, but I’m a sucker for cinnamon.
SUPPORT
I still haven’t set up a thing for sending me money, despite this being the age of Patreon etc. Instead, if you do have some spare money, consider donating to SWARM, a charity for (and run by) sex workers in the UK.
THANK YOU, NEXT:
Apple pie and chocolate cake are both classics, so let’s complete the trilogy with lemon tart. More pastry! More flavour! The recipe I use suggests you serve it at a dinner party, but it’s still a pandemic so it’s fine to eat it all at home by yourself.