Chocolate Chunk Mud Cake

I have made this cake a few times, and it comes out differently each time.  Once my Thermomix didn't have 'clean feet' so it didn't measure out the butter properly.  Too much butter in a mud cake isn't a good thing, it turns out.

Another time it ended up being a bad cake because my son burnt it.  Long story.  It wasn't worth eating.  And that's saying something folks!

The other three times it has been DIVINE!!!

The cake batter was certainly edible enough.  I wasn't sure if there was even going to be a cake.

I freaked out a little when I pulled it from the oven.

You see, mud cakes like to collapse on me.  Maybe it's because I don't like turning the oven down quite so low and having to wait 2 hours for them to cook because I want to eat them NOW.  I admit, I was worried about this one.  I didn't want to overcook it, but it was gooey.  I took it out of the oven and the middle sank.  I waited for it to cool - just cool enough to smother Betty Crocker Frosting on it, had a piece and it was okay.

Put it in the fridge overnight, and that's where the magic happens.  I had forgotten, that's what I did with the first one as well.  YUM...the cake just merges together in all its chocolatiness and ends up tasting like the perfect mud cake, even if it didn't look cafe worthy.  I think that means it has 'set'.  I should write that on my recipe.

See the collapsed middle?  That's 300 grams of good quality chocolate in that cake.  It tastes much better than it looks from this angle.

Served up with some fresh strawberries, and I'm in Heaven!

*Sigh* Someone has to eat all that mud cake now!

Here's the recipe, from the Thermomix Forum (http://www.forumthermomix.com/index.php?topic=3583.0):-


"This is a recipe I found in a magazine - I think it was a Food Ideas one but not sure.


Ingredients

- 200g butter
- 300g cooking chocolate - good quality
- 1/4 cup hot water
- 20g cocoa
- 1 tspn vanilla extract
- 200g castor sugar
- 3 eggs - at room temperature
- 120g SR flour


Method

Preheat oven to 160C. Grease a 20 cm round cake pan and line it with baking paper.


Place butter, 200g of chopped chocolate and hot water into TM bowl. Melt for 5 mins at 37C on Speed 1.


Add cocoa to warm chocolate mixture and stir for 5 secs on Speed 4. Add vanilla, castor sugar and eggs. Mix for 10 secs on Speed 4.


Sift in flour and stir on for 1.30 mins on Speed 2.


Pour half the mixture into prepared cake pan. Chop remaining chocolate and sprinkle half over the batter. Top with rest of the batter and chopped chocolate.


Bake cake for 55 to 60 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre has moist crumbs clinging".


Note: I found my Thermomix doesn't like to measure butter properly, so I used 170 grams of butter instead.

It took about an hour and a half before I gave up and pulled the cake out of the oven.