Chocolate Cake

The Gods must have been smiling on me the other day, as after school, the Smalls played together so nicely-no squabbling, poking or teasing-very lovely indeed.
To celebrate the occasion (and in a vain attempt to reinforce the idea that this is the kind of behaviour that we want…) I decided to make pudding.
At about 5.50pm.
When we eat at 6pm.

Praise be for Microwave Chocolate Cake!
And Google.
I did a quick Google search, and came up with this recipe here, which I adapted slightly.

If you haven’t tried it, then you really need to-super quick and easy, works very well as an attempted bribe for good behaviour  a last minute pud or cake.

This is what you need:

• 110g plain flour
• 150g sugar (I used 110g caster sugar in the cake itself, and 40g caster sugar in the topping)
• 65g cocoa
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 large egg
• 85g salted butter, melted
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup (250ml) warm water

This is what you do:

• In a  largish bowl, place the flour, 110g of sugar, 55g cocoa and the baking powder, and mix well (I might even go so far as to advocate sifting on this one, to get rid of the cocoa lumps)
• Combine the butter, egg, warm water and vanilla extract, and then add to the dry mix and stir well (don’t panic if it’s a bit lumpy)
  
• Mix the remaining cocoa powered and sugar together and then sprinkle on top
  
• Microwave on HIGH for 5 minutes
  
• Serve with raspberries fresh from the garden and clotted cream (optional!)
  

PS. This even counts as a low energy pud, as the microwave is super efficient, so you can at least feel virtuous on that score…!