My friend Esme always makes an awesome microwave chocolate cake, known as Zurkia's Chocolate Cake. The problem is I lost the recipe! I googled a few recipes and managed to find something similar. This is not really a cake, in that you can't take it out of the container you baked it in until you are serving it. I supposes that makes it more of a pudding, which is what I used it for the other day.

Somehow, I don't have an affinity with baking. I think it is a bit too precise for me - I'm from the school of "Chuck it all in, we'll see what happens!" With cooking it works very well, but baking is another story. So my advice is: Follow the recipe and hope for the best. I can't guarantee success, but if I can make it and it's edible, most people should be able too.

As an added bit of useless information, I once heard of a woman who did a doctoral thesis on chocolate cake!

So, back to the recipe.

Ingredients         

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 tbs cocoa
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup cold water or coffee
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1tsp vanilla essence

Method

Mix all the ingredients together to form a smooth batter. Pour into a 24cm square microwave proof dish. Bake on high in the microwave for about 8 minutes, checking every 2 minutes.Once the cake is firm and you can stick a skewer into it and it comes out clean, the cake is done. Melt a slab of chocolate and smooth over the top of the cake. Esme uses whole nut chocolate which adds a nuttiness to the cake. I used dark chocolate and decorated with gold sprinkles to add richness a sparkle to it!

Tip

Slice the cake into squares and serve it with ice-cream, whipped cream of even a hot chocolate sauce. This keeps well as my boys ate the leftovers as a pre-breakfast snackthe next day!

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