Sunday Scribblings "Visions"

G'Day,
The Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is "Visions".
I thought a bit about that word and couldn't get my thoughts together.
Then I thought what was my last vision.
Well today I had a vision of a yummy chocolate cake, ( or was that a craving?). I went to the shop and got some groceries with just that in mind. I wanted a moist soft chocolate cake to split down the middle and fill with freshly whipped cream then top with chocolate icing and fresh strawberries. Mmmmm.
Well I came home and started to go through my old hand written collection of recipes for my favourite chocky cake ones.
Here they are;
The first one came from the side of the cocoa packet, I have made it many times over many years. It works well.
Dark Secret Cake
125 gram margarine.
1 & 1/4 cups caster sugar.
1/4 cup cocoa.
2 cups self raising flour.
1 teaspoon bicarb soda.
2 eggs.
1 cup boiling water.
1 teaspoon vanilla essence.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Grease & flour 2x 20cm cake pans.
Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, beat .
Sift together cocoa, flour,& bicarb.
Add to mixture, add rest of ingredients and mix well.
Pour evenly into tins & cook for 25 minutes or until cooked.
Cool for 10 minutes in tins before turning out.
Sandwich together with whipped cream and ice with chocolate icing.
You can also cook this in one larger tin then split it and fill.

The next chocolate cake recipe that I use and recommend is one I have had for years that I found in some magazine long ago. It is a large cake and keeps well.
Family Chocolate cake.
185g butter or margarine.
1/2 cup cocoa.
1/2 cup water.
1 cup milk.
3 eggs lightly beaten.
1& 1/2 cups caster sugar.
3 cups self raising flour, sifted.
1 teaspoon vanilla.

Grease a 32x22cm baking dish or a large cake tin and line with paper.Set oven temperature at 180 Celsius.
Place butter, water and cocoa in heavy based saucepan and cook over low heat until melted and blended together. Remove from pan and cool.Pour into mixing bowl. add milk, eggs, & sugar and beat until well combined. Stir in flour and vanilla then beat 1 minute until smooth and combined. Pour into prepared tin, smooth the top with a spatula. Bake in preheated oven for 50 minutes or until skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean. Cool in tin. When cold split, fill with whipped cream and top with chocolate icing or dust with icing sugar.

There is another chocolate cake recipe that my daughter likes to make. It is from the Lady Flo Bjelke Peterson book that I love. Her recipes always seem to work out good and I use quite a few different ones from that book.
Easy Chocolate cake
1 cup self raising flour.
1 cup caster sugar.
1 teaspoon vanilla.
3 tablespoons butter.
3 tablespoons cocoa.
2 eggs.

Mix all ingredients in bowl for 4 minutes.
Pour mixture into greased lined 20cm tin. Bake in moderate oven (180-200 degrees C) for 40-45 minutes.

But....I found this one in my book toooooo, cut out of the newspaper. I am going to try this one out, next time.
Mud Cake
250g butter.
150g dark chocolate, chopped.
1 cup hot water.
1/3rd cup whiskey.
1 tablespoon coffee powder.
2 cups caster sugar.
1 & 1/2 cups plain flour.
1/4 cup self raising flour.
1/4 cup cocoa.
2 eggs, beaten.

Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius.
Grease and line 23cm tin.
Mix butter, chocolate, water, coffee powder, whiskey and sugar in a heat proof bowl. Stir over boiling water until melted together and smooth.
Sift flours and cocoa together.
Stir into melted mixture with eggs. Mix well.
Pour into prepared tin and cook for 75 to 80 minutes, test.
Cool then ice with this mixture.
Melt 200g chocolate with 1/4 cup cream over boiling water until smooth. Cool until it thickens a bit, then spread over cooled cake.
Ohh yum!. Definitely gotta try that one! I haven't got any whiskey but I thought I would just use Tia Maria instead.
So I went to start getting the ingredients together and measure them all out.

On Friday morning the electricity company was doing some work in the park outside our house. The power was off for about 4 hours.
My oven didn't like that, obviously.
Today when I switched it on to preheat to do my cake it was not working.
But... I had a vision of this yummy chocolate cake, split down the middle and filled with cream and topped with that icing, maybe some of those strawberries I got the other day....
I could almost taste it!
I have lost some weight, probably 12 to 15 kilos over the last 3 or 4 months. I am quite proud of that. I have dropped 2 clothing sizes and have been having fun buying new clothes. I haven't fitted into this size for a long long time.
Someone must be looking after me... because my oven won't work! He he! Thank you God.

Bye.
Love L
i
n
d
a.