Procrastibaking

There's just nothing like a bit of procrastibaking when studying for exams (or indeed when one ought to be doing almost anything that one would rather not be doing).  So you can imagine how pleased I was on Tuesday afternoon (with exam looming on Wednesday morning) to be able to convince myself that it really was imperative that I bake a cake for a friend's birthday.  Realistically I doubt she would've given a hoot had we turned up bearing cake or not, but the excuse worked for me. 

Last Sunday, when baking Alistair's pear and ginger birthday cake, our oven's element blew up, necessitating a trip down the street, to bake the cake in a friend's mum's oven (one of the innumerable handy things about small towns).  While I was there she gave me this recipe, for a very speedy chocolate cake/sponge (I guess it depends on how well you beat it).  Anyhoo, I gave it a shot on Tuesday, for Cath's birthday, and it turned out pretty well.  I'm not a massive chocolate cake fan and I liked it.  The others, who are chocolate cake fans, all appeared to like it to.  So here it is - super easy and pretty well foolproof.  I like the whole 'bung everything into a bowl' idea too - go the Waikato Ladies' Golf Association (from whose cookbook it came)! 

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

3 tbsp soft butter

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp cocoa

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 tsp baking powder

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.  Line/grease 20cm round cake tin (or equivilant).
2. Beat all ingredients together for 3 minutes.
3. Pour into tin and bake for 20-30 minutes. 
4. Ice or dust with icing sugar.