After my traumatic tooth extraction, I made a decision not to eat sweets (as in candy) again. 

I therefore have steadily satisfied (somewhat) sugar cravings through means of fruit, biscuits and ugh lifeless replacements of candy that once ruled my life! 

It’s been difficult but I put on a brave face sort of

I decided to spend some time catering to my neglected urges and made a chocolate mud cake with strawberry cream cheese filling for under £20! I used a basic recipe, simple technique and favourable fresh ingredients *no artificial junk*.
This is what the final product looked like

It looks messy but tastes greattttttttt. I’ve been receiving positive feedback too. Actually I was questioned several times about whether I really made the cake or whether I bought it. After continuous denial and having to provide photo evidence, it was beyond reasonable doubt, I had made a nice chocolate cake! Woo! 

Here’s exactly how I done it 

I found a recipe on YouTube for a Chocolate Mud Cake 

This particular video was created by “BakedLikeAPro” who provided a simple and easy recipe to follow. Link: https://youtu.be/YqGLgcnP2HQ

I had baked before so I was comfortable shifting my focus to timing and cleaning up as I went along.

Ingredients:

Cake

• 300g Flour
• 300g of brown sugar (original recipe used 550g of white granulated sugar😧)
• 4 Eggs
• 125ml milk
• 250g of unsalted butter
• 175ml hot water
• 250g Lindt D’or chocolate 
• 55g of cocoa powder 
• 30ml instant coffee 
• 30ml vegetable oil
• 2.5 ml baking soda 
• 10ml baking powder 
• 5 ml salt
• Teaspoon of vanilla extract (I used powdered vanilla extract)

Two layered Chocolate Ganache 

• 300g Charbonnel & Walker the chocolate drink original (chocolate flakes)
• 350g Lindt D’or
• Double cream 

Strawberry Cream Cheese Filling 

• 280g Full Fat Soft Philadelphia Cheese 
• Strawberries 
• Double cream
• Tablespoon of Confectioners sugar
• 100g unsalted butter 
• Vanilla Extract 

I didn’t follow his recipe exactly because, believe it or not I hate cakes, drinks etc that are too sweet! When I bake, I dramatically reduce the amount of sugar used for most recipes because I’m not into it. Moderation is key!

The Process Begins 

Before you begin turn on your oven 150 degrees Celsius/300 F

1. First you take a pot, fill it half way with hot water and take a heat proof bowl and put it to sit on that pot.

2. In the heat proof bowl add all of your butter, sugar, chocolate (I decided to use Lindt D’or Chocolate) and dissolve your coffee into the 175ml of water and add that to the bowl. 

3. Leave it to melt into a nice chocolate sauce (should take five minutes)

4. Once everything is melted take the bowl off the stove and mix (with a spoon)

5. Add your wet ingredients that being milk, then whisk, add eggs (once egg at a time) then whisk and then vegetable oil and whisk (preferably with an electric whisk)

6. Then in a separate bowl sieve your dry ingredients being the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder and use a whisk (I used a clean hand whisk) to mix them all together in the bowl with the melted chocolate etc.

7. You’ll find that once you add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients the mixture gets very very thick very quickly. 

I advice taking a spoon and mixing it manually first before using the electric whisk.

8. Once everything is mixed, the batter should look like this:

Haha! It looks like mud, this is why it’s called a mud cake, it looks crazy and the batter is thick as hell but it’s supposed to be.

9. Get your baking tin ready and line with baking paper and then pour in your mixture

10. Leave to bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes on 150 degrees Celsius 

(Original recipe said bake for two hours but my cake only took one hour and a half. I’d recommend rechecking using the toothpick method every ten minutes once you’ve surpassed the hour and a half mark)

YOU SHOULD BE LEFT WITH THIS 

Let it cool down!!!!!!!!

Once the cake is baked, let the cake cool down.

Cut the crust of the top of the cake with a spatula knife or bread knife evenly and cut the cake into two even halves (this is hard to do in my opinion because it isn’t easy to maintain an even cut all around). 
Once it has been cut use the base of the cake as the top of the cake ( as it is the smoothest part) and use the messy cut parts for the bottom and the middle. (Hope that makes sense) 

Strawberry Cream Cheese Filling 

1. Wash and cut strawberries in half (cut off the heads too)

2. Get a small pot and add the strawberries and add confectioners sugar (just a little for sweetness) and mix until it’s a purée.

Something like this

3. Use the electric whisk and whip 100g of unsalted butter (make sure the butter is at room temperature)

4. Whip the Philadelphia Cream Cheese with the butter

5. Add confectioners sugar 100g

5. Add a splash of vanilla extract, less than a half a tea spoon 

6. Whip it, but only for a minute on a low setting.

7. Add your strawberry purée and mix

8. Add to the middle section of your cake and cover with the other half. You then have your Filling.

LAST PART OF THIS 

Chocolate Ganache

1.Turn on the stove

2.Put a pot on the stove and fill with hot water up to half way point

3.Put a heat proof bowl on top of the pot

4.Add 300g of chocolate into the bowl

I used Charbonnel & Walker the chocolate drink original chocolate flakes and 50g of Lindt D’or. 

5.Let it melt and once it has add double cream and mix.

6.Once it’s mixed and is a beautiful creamy milk chocolate remove the bowl and pour it over your cake immediately otherwise the chocolate will turn weird if overheated. 

Tip: if the chocolate gets overheated then add some milk and take a manual whisk and stir whilst on the pot

7.Use a flat spatula and a cake turn table to spread evenly, it will pour out around the sides which is fine as it adds a nice touch.

I repeated this process with Lindt D’or chocolate as the Charbonnel & Walker the chocolate drink original (chocolate flakes) was too dark.

This is what the cake looked like once I refrigerated it for half an hour. You can see the two layers of chocolate. Add strawberries if you want.