Thus Bakes Zarathustra

I’m not good at barbecues. Coming from a resolutely indoor family I have little experience of them, so I don’t know what goes in to a good one. Recently I helped to organise a barbecue for our school with a group of friends, or, rather, I fretted over what kind of cakes to bring, and pastries, and mint-and-feta smeared corn on the cob, while they bought the beer and ice and rented the barbecues and set up the PA and made sure there were enough glasses and napkins and tomato sauce and bread.

I decided to make two batches of cupcakes, one vegan, one not, Deb’s onion and mustard tart, and a slab version of her tomato and corn pie. I finished everything at 2am, and decided to leave the foil-wrapped pies in the switched off oven overnight to save them from marauding cats, as I live in a share house and there is never any room in the fridge. In the morning I woke to find that I’d never properly turned the oven off, and the pies were completely dried out and inedible. I managed to salvage some of the tomato pie, and made my way to campus with my boxes, bags and trays of food.

When we were setting up I went to bring down the food on a large plastic baker’s tray. At one point I braced the tray against the wall with my hip so I could readjust how I was holding it. I pushed too hard against the wall, the tray slipped, I pirouetted on the knee I had, to use the parlance of the AFL, surgically ‘cleaned out’ last year, the tray flipped over and I fell right on top of it, crushing everything.

Afterwards I hit the bottle. Hard.

And also the old Cadbury’s cocoa powder.

PSYCHE! You thought I tried to drink the pain away. Instead, I made another cake that weekend for my friend Nicole’s birthday, a boozy chocolate bundt that is, hands down, the best cake I’ve made in months. It isn’t swathed in buttercreams or layered or dripping with icing, though I considered making a bourbon-spiked ganache to pour over the top. It’s just a good, flavoursome, smooth chocolate cake, so dense it’s practically crumbless, that cuts into neat, firm pieces. It keeps well, apparently. I rather regret not taking some home to eat in slivers straight from the fridge when necessary. And it was a piece of piss to make, a needed antidote to the endless scooping, baking, and piping of the week. It doesn’t even have chocolate in it, just more cocoa powder than I’ve ever used in a single recipe. You just heat together the butter and liquids, whisk in sugar and eggs, sift over the flour and you are done. The only tricky bit was preparing the bundt tin. I usually prepare my tins with a hit of cooking oil spray, typically coating the rest of the kitchen in a fine film of sunflower oil in the process. I could see the cake sticking mercilessly to the ridges of the pan, so I actually used a pastry brush and butter to thoroughly grease the pan, followed by a generous dusting of cocoa powder. The cake came out easily, so I recommend you do the same.

Bourbon bundt cake
Via Gourmet. Serves 12-14

•  1 cup cocoa powder, not Dutch-process, plus extra for pan dusting
• 1 1/2 cups coffee
• 1/2 cup bourbon
• 225g butter, cut into pieces, plus extra for greasing
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Melt together cocoa powder, coffee, bourbon and butter in a small pan over low heat, then transfer to a large bowl. Immediately whisk in the sugar, then let it sit for 5 minutes to cool, or as long as it takes you to butter and cocoa powder your bundt or tube pan. Beat together eggs and vanilla in a small bowl, then whisk into the bourbon/cocoa/coffee/butter mixture. Sift in baking soda, salt and flour, then whisk until just combined. It’ll be quite runny.

Pour into your prepared pan and bake for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. It took well over an hour in my crappy oven, so I’d say start checking at 40 minutes and keep checking ’til it’s done. Allow to cool for two hours - no really, two hours - then invert onto a serving plate.