Oi! We did this one last year!
OK, OK. You know what goes really well with RPGs? Cake.
Cake is a convenient dessert, requiring only one hand and no implements (although sometimes it's best to have a fork on hand.) It normally comes on a plate, or at a minimum, a paper napkin, thus helping keep it off your character sheet. At worst, it's likely to shed a few crumbs, unlike the mass of sugar liable to fall off a jam doughnut, and of course there's the plate to catch them. Served neither hot nor cold, it will happily wait for a convenient break point for serving. And of course it's delicious and comes in a huge variety of flavours.
I'm making a birthday cake for my husband tomorrow, and he's requested this one.
Chocolate mayonnaise cake with raspberries and ganache
For the cake:
- 275g self-raising flour
- 225g sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 200 grams mayonnaise
- 4 tbsp cocoa powder
- 225 mls boiling water
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
Preheat the oven to 180º C, 350º F, Gas Mark 4.
Line an 18cm cake tin with greaseproof paper or baking parchment.
Put the flour, sugar and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the mayonnaise and beat until it looks like breadcrumbs.
Combine the boiling water and cocoa powder and stir until it's free of lumps.
Add the cocoa mix and the vanilla essence to the mixing bowl and stir until it's smooth (no beating required.)
Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for about an hour. To test, insert a skewer into the middle and pull out. If it comes out clean, the cake's done.
Leave to cool.
For the ganache:
- 200g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
- 300ml double cream
- 2 tbsp sugar
Put the chocolate in a large mixing bowl.
Put the cream and sugar in a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar is all melted/dissolved.
Bring the cream to the boil then immediately remove it from the heat, pour it over the chocolate, and whisk until it's thick and glossy.
Leave to cool until it's thick enough to spread over a cake.
Assembly:
Split the cake in half. Use a cake wire if you have one. Otherwise, find some objects about half the height of the cake, put one either side, and use them as guides as you slice through it with a large bread knife. If the top half of the cake breaks into two or three pieces at this point, don't panic. We can fix it.
Spread a layer of ganache over the bottom layer of the cake. Replace the top layer, using ganache as glue to stick any broken pieces together.
Spread the rest of the ganache over the top of the cake (and the sides if you have extra). Cover the top with raspberries, pointy end up, starting from the middle and working outwards.
Made this cake, inspired by the Bake-off title sequence, itself brought to mind by the Great Brindlewood Bay Bake-off.
— SavageSpiel (@SavageSpiel) April 10, 2021
Still too full of burgers to eat it. pic.twitter.com/SqHM3gyeg1
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