mystery mexican cake

(sadly, the mystery is in the mexicans, not in the cake)

warning, this makes more cake than fits in one smallish cake tin. So, either use a big tin or make two cakes! Or reduce the ingredients, I suppose. So many choices!




Ingredients

for the cake:

• 2 cups self-raising flour
  
• 1 cup cocoa powder
  
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon goodness
  
• 375g buttery stuff
  
• 2.5 cups sugar
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
  
• 6 eggs
  
• 3 tablespoons instant coffee*
  
• 3 tablespoons hot water
  
• 1 cup milk**
  

* I don't know anything about coffee, so if you want to use real coffee I'm not sure how it would all work...
** The original recipe said buttermilk, but I couldn't find any in the shop. The cake still turned out fine using regular milk.

For the icing:

• 200g (light) chocolate
  
• 1 tablespoon instant coffee
  
• 0.5 teaspoon cinnamon
  
• 1 tablespoon cocoa
  
• 2 cups icing sugar
  
• 60-100gish buttery stuff
  

So, how does this cake thing happen?

1. Set your oven to 180 degrees, unless it's one of those bastard ovens that is all fan-forced. In which case set it lower. I didn't know this at the time, but thankfully the temperature was set lower while the cake was cooking. Otherwise, oh noes, burning!
   
2. Mix the flour, cocoa, and cinnamon. Leave the resultant mixture to one side.
   
3. Cream the butter and sugar with the vanilla. Beat until thick and light.
   
4. Add the eggs one by one to the butterysugaryvanillamixture. Beat well as each egg is added.
   
5. In a jug, if you have one, otherwise some other receptacle, mix the coffee with the hot water. Then add the milk.
   
6. Mix half of the flour mixture and the coffeemilk mixture into the creamed mix with a wooden spoon, and combine gently. Then add the remaining flour and coffeemilk mixtures, and mix again.
   
7. Do that thing with the cake tin where you either butter it all up or line it with baking paper.
   
8. Pour the batter into the cake tin, then bake it for 55 minutes ish. Until it is firm and stuff. The point where cakes are normally cooked. Good.
   
9. Remove the cake from the oven, let it cool, then take it out of the cake tin. If you only have one cake tin and too much mixture, you will need to wash the tin and then repeat the lining and cooking steps.
   
10. Put the cake to one side / in the fridge.
    

Icing!

1. Break up the chocolate. Melt the chocolate and the butter with short bursts in the microwave followed by much stirring.
   
2. Add the cinammon and cocoa. Stir/mix/otherimperative.
   
3. When it comes to the coffee, you have two options: put it in now, in which case it doesn't really dissolve and you're trying to heat it up some more with short bursts in the microwave and much stirring and after a few minutes of that you give up and add hot water and do that and then remove the undissolved coffee. OR, in a separate bowl or something, mix the coffee with some hot water, let it dissolve, then add to the icing mixture.
   
4. Add the icing sugar, mix.
   
5. Spread it over the cake!
   
6. Let everything cool - if you're sticking it back in the fridge, you may need some gladwrap, and to avoid it sticking to the icing may need to use toothpicks to hold the gladwrap up.
   
7. Later, cut the cake. Eat the cake. Hurrah!
   

Result: cake. Add sombreros if you really want it to be Mexican.