The Best Mud You Will Ever Eat! Some Knitters and Others think So.

Hello on a rain filled Monday from the city of Saint John.

As this blog develops, I hope to have others share articles and recipes.  Today, I share a recipe that someone I have met and correspond with through Facebook, posted to her account and then I have taken the step to share it here.  Thanks to Marie-Claude Plourde, for putting me on to some of the best mud you will ever eat!

And please note -- the recipe is not healthy as you read below.  But...... it is good!  As I recall a French pastry chef saying one time, when you make a cheesecake with butter, it means you do not eat the whole cake!. Savour and enjoy some.  Savour and enjoy some.

Savour and enjoy some......  Sounds like a life lesson.  To stop, slow down and take time to enjoy what you are actually experiencing and not just be a tourist at all these stops in your life.  There is a Word that says to place our hope on God who richly provides us all things for our enjoyment.  See I Timothy 6:19.

And I am thankful!  To have found this good thing to enjoy. 

This mud cake and to provide it to others for their enjoyment.  Can I hear an Amen?  Try this recipe and you will be thankful and saying Amen, which can be translated as let it be true.  And it is true that this is some of the Best Mud you will ever eat!

I first served this cake to a group of knitters my wife was teaching.  I made it as a surprise and adapted the recipe you see below.  I will provide my changes.  Make this and suggest some of your own?

Kladdkaka Chocolate-Mud-Cake

Recipe very very freely adapted from this one:http://swedeandsourkitchen.com/2012/11/05/kladdkaka-chocolate-mud-cake/. This is NOT a healthy recipe. But it is vegan and accidentally gluten free. ;)

1/2 cup Earth Balance margarine  -- I used Butter.
1/2 cup applesauce
3/4 cup quinoa flour (fine) -- Quinoa flour is Expensive so I used a regular cake flour.
1 cup cane sugar -- I have used 3/4 cup and put in some stevia.
1/4 cup corn syrup (or other syrup: agave, maple, rice, etc., but corn syrup is thicker)
5 tbsp cocoa -- Essential you use an unsweetend cocoa powder if you are able to.
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp chocolate essence (optional, or a few drops of almond extract)
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 pinch of cloves
1 pinch of cinnamon
1 pinch of salt

Notes -- I have added some Baking powder and baking soda to allow it to rise some so my version is not a true mud cake.  So that will alter your cooking time.  So pay attention to the cooking process.  As the instructions say below, you want it a little undercooked as the goal is "mud cake".

-- I will probably put some zested orange in the next edition but I am undecided to mix it all in or place some on top after cooking as a decoration?  Any suggestions?

-- I like using smaller pans so it allows you to make smaller finished products and then you can give some away and not face the temptation of all that butter and chocolate!

I have used coconut flour and that will result in more of a dense mud condition to the finished product.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Beat together with a spoon: the margarine, applesauce and corn syrup; then add all other ingredients and mix well.
3. Pour into a greased 9-inch springform, greased and floured.
4. Bake 15 to 20 minutes depending on the consistency you want. It is a cake that should remain a little bit "undercooked" so it will be sticky. That's kinda the goal: *mud* cake.
5.