Mystery Mocha Cake

It was Ed's birthday last week, and I wanted to make a cake, so I was browsing the King Arthur Flour site for cake recipes. I never actually made him a cake, since he just took in the leftover car bomb cupcakes to work and they all gorged themselves on those, but, I found a cake I really wanted to make: the MYSTERY MOCHA CAKE! Mostly its the mocha in the title--anything with coffee and chocolate put together is a win, for me. It looked pretty straightforward, so I tried it last night.

The recipe says to bake it for 40 minutes, which I did, and it did in fact bounce back when poked, but, it was still really goopy on the inside. Since there are no eggs in the cake, thats ok. Its molten. And DELICIOUS. There is this crunchy coating on top, and goopy insides, and some chocolate cakeness too. Oh god. Amazing. I would have taken more pictures, except. well. There wasn't much to take pictures of, once we got into it. King Arthur says this this is a "low calorie" cake--I think thats relative. I mean, if you eat the whole thing, thats not so low calorie. Although low is a relative term, right?

Here is the recipe from King Arthur Flour's site, but I've reprinted it for your lazy viewing pleasure. Seriously, make this. It is so good. You will not regret it. But its not fancy or pretty-looking, so don't make it for some special occasion. Or do.

Mystery Mocha Cake
3/4C granulated sugar (I used brown sugar, due to my current lack of white sugar)
1C flour (I used 1/2C white flour, 1/2C whole wheat)
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4C cocoa
3/4C skim milk
2 tsp vanilla

Sauce
1C double-strong coffee (I don't have a coffee maker, so I just used instant coffee. And decaf. Thats like sacrilege to some people...sorry. tasted good anyway!)
1/4C cocoa
1/2C white sugar
1/2C brown sugar (I used all brown sugar)

For the cake, preheat the oven to 350. Mix together the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the skim milk and vanilla, stir it around until it makes a cake batter. Go ahead and taste, since there aren't any eggs.

Spread the cake batter into an 8x8" pan that has been lightly greased. Sprinkle a cup of sugar over the top of the batter. It is going to look like a LOT of sugar. Like an inch thick. Thats ok. Thats a good thing. Don't use less sugar.

Mix together the coffee and cocoa. Pour it over the top of the cake batter + sugar. Its going to look like a LOT of sauce. In fact, the whole top of the cake is going to be liquid. Thats ok. Just put it in the oven. Cook for 40 minutes, and take it out when it bounces back a little when you press it.

You want it still pretty goopy inside, because that goopy coffee-chocolate (ok, mocha) sauce is the best part. Unless the crunchy sugar top is the best part. The whole thing is pretty good. Especially when topped with vanilla ice cream, when its still hot from the oven. Ohhhh chocolatey heaven!


Here you can see the chocolatey-goopy-goodness. A zoom-in to the bite-size piece that is missing from the whole cake...