Emergency Chocolate Cake

I’m not known for being organized .. but the cake that I made the weekend before last was a total emergency chocolate cake.  It all happened because we started a pop up bakery after reading about Rose Prince’s children starting their own bakery we held a family conference and decided to do the same. However this post is not about the bakery.  This weekend will be our 3^rd week and when I get a moment I will write about it.  This post is about the emergency birthday cake, and I mention the bakery to set the scene ….

 For the first week we made our bread and scones and set out the stall.  Nobody came. We are in a sleepy village and so, not to be defeated we closed up and took the bread and scones door to door, giving out samples and getting orders for the following week.  I was so determined that our baking shouldn’t go to waste I forgot the time.  I forgot that I had arranged a birthday tea party for my youngest daughters birthday.

We chatted with our neighbors, passed the time of day and took the first orders for the following weeks sourdough.  This, I thought, is the most interaction I have had with the people I live l close by to ever, and we chatted our way around the village in the bright February sunshine.

As we stopped to look at the early daffodils coming up I dreamily looked at my watch  expecting it to be about lunch time .. and practically had a meltdown on the spot.  It was 3:30pm.  Oh God .. ..the birthday party … the promise of a cake .. I had exactly one hour to bake the prettiest pink birthday cake ever that I had promised to my five year old.

I practically ran up the driveway.  my husband smiled and asked had I got a minute?   A minute? !! I snapped back at him so hard that I had not got a moment to spare with such force that he took a step back.  I flew into the kitchen and tried to work out if I had time to get in and out of town to Waitrose and buy a cheats cake. No.  With parking and Saturday traffic that was impossible.  The only option was to bake as fast as I could.

I practically threw in the ingredients into my trusty Kenwood.   Whenever I am in a hurry I resort back to old measurements.  An 8 oz chocolate cake, with a bar of 65% cherry chocolate bar chopped up and stirred in was in the oven in less than 5 minutes  .. fortunately it was still warm from the baking earlier in the day.

I ran about wiping up the flour and cleaning the baking bombsite my children and I had made such a mess earlier and then checked in my cake-decorating box.  45 minutes later as the cake came out of the oven the first guests arrived to a kitchen full of the smells of chocolate cake.

There was not time to ice the cake, besides it was just too hot, so I sifted a very generous amount of icing sugar over the cake, wrapped a pink ribbon about it, melted chocolate and used this to stick the sugared roses I had on and popped the kettle on.

A quick application of lip-gloss and a smile later and the tea party began. 

As I brought cake out my delighted daughter declared it to be the prettiest cake in the world  .. ever.  I cut an extra large apologetic slice for my husband and the other mothers all marveled that the cake was still warm!