I managed to instigate CAKEDAY! at work and at the inaugural CAKEDAY! yesterday I made my dear (pastry-chef) wife's amazing chocolate cake. People were so impressed that I thought I'd open-source this sucker to share the love.

PS

Remember {crap in = crap out} so put in the best ingredients you can get.

Post PPS cake was AWESOME. Trust this recipe :)

INGREDIENT LIST: - this makes a flat 'tray' cake but you can do round ones and stack em. I'd recommend you keep to max 6 cm deep in a baking tray)

2 cups self raising flour

2 cups soft brown sugar

1 cup coco (get the good stuff. Green and Blacks make a really an organic one which I used)

2 and a half teaspoons of bi-carbonate of soda

salt ( Luisa instructed "not too much and not too little".. WTF? yeah I know.. .Go for half a teaspoon, but I may come back to amend this...) Chocolate was perfectly salt balanced.

Tub of buttermilk (the one I used says 284ML cultured buttermilk ideal for cooking from Waitrose)

3/4 cup of oil (no need to go fancy on this one. Just plain vegetable oil will do. You don't want any other tastes in this baby - and PS this replaces the butter from what I can see and makes for a really nice spongy bounciness.)

2 large eggs

vanilla extract (again "not too much" was the instruction... I say "f*ck-off". No one does anything scientific and says "add _some_ plutonium and _hope_....")  Anyway I went for a short splash..I really don't think it matters either way more or less.

cup of coffee (plain black douwe egberts instant gold in this case.. The kind I never actually drink since I'm an immense coffee snob)

====== MAINTENANCE INSTRUCTIONS ======

PREP

Start by PREHEATING your oven. (Sounds like a euphemism for something .....ladies?)  But no. Just switch on the oven before you start else your mix will stand too long at the end)

Set your fan over to 160 degrees C (I can't speak for a any other kind of oven but you want it at 'hot but not roasting potatoes hot' so about 180C max)

When you put the cake in later turn it down to 150)

Boil water and wake a cup of coffee - then let is stand to cool while you go ahead

Choose your tools:

Take a oven tray (I used a 35-ish cm by 20-ish cm oven tray)

Line with wax-paper for easy removal/flip-over later

Mixing:

Luisa has a f*cking AWESOME mixer from Kitchen-Aid that her Mom and Dad got her years back in South-Africa (then about a year ago her cousin brought to the UK on a trip as hand luggage. She deserves a frikking medal for the effort because it's heavy.... and beautiful ...and red) 

Please note: I'm not bragging - I think I'm _sharing_ the reason why, in my opinion, the cake is coming out well when I make it this way..

Anyway, put your shit in the mixer or if you are doing this by hand prep to work your arm muscles nice and hard

START

ADD

2 x large eggs and switch to slow to whisk 'em. Should go from yellowy gush to white foamy gush then go ahead.

Add the sugar and oil so it whisks to an emulsified consistency (meaning till there's no glaring oily bits, but all 'mayonaisey' so to speak)

ADD

salt and vanilla

Mix well 

Then with the mixer on SLOW.

For the rest of this recipe - DO NOT MIX/HANDLE TOO MUCH.

Supposedly the less you handle this the better the outcome.

ADD

buttermilk 

+ add about an inch of milk to the buttermilk still stuck in the yub to clear it out and add a little more liquid to the mix

ADD

2 X cups flour,

1 X cup coco and 2 and half tsp bi-carb

LAST ADD

the cup of coffee that's been cooling

DON'T mix too much. 

Stop and DIG DEEP and FOLD with a "spatch-bat" (that's what my friend Ros calls a spatula) 

Pour into baking tray lined with wax paper

Shove in the preheated oven (remember turn to 150C now ..I guess this is to bring it all up to speed quicker)

Check in on her at about 15 minutes and stick a clean knife in to see if anything sicks to the tip. If so (likely) then keep going.

At 20 minutes today I did the test and there was no stick-to-the-tip test and BOOM!.....

Take out onto a cooling tray. Flip over and remove the baking tray and let cool.

Later slap some Carnation Caramel on this baby and enjoy with friends.

GOOD LUCK!

Gus out.