Recipe Time: Super-Easy All-Together Cake

When I moved out of home two-and-a-bit years ago I could not cook at all. I mean, I could make plain pasta, and I knew (more or less) how kitchen implements worked, but I'd never cooked a meal ever. While lining up to buy my very first text books at the uni book store I was looking over the racks (anyone who's tried to buy textbooks during the rush period will tell you, it's a freaking long line), and I saw this gem, sitting in the recipe section - Afternoon Tea. Recipes that had been tried and tested over the years, and had been compiled by a magazine that I've come to adore, Frankie.

It had pretty pictures, not very many or hard-to-find ingredients and very simple looking recipes. And so, eager to use this to learn to cook, I bought it. Defiantly one of my better impulse buys. I've used it almost constantly since then, and the recipes have yet to fail me. The chocolate icing from the peppermint chocolate cake recipe is constantly praised, and the all-together cake is always a hit.


All-Together Cake

Ingredients:
1/4 cup milk
125g butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup self-raising flour

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Combine all ingredients, and beat for approximately 6 minutes.
3. Pour into greased cake tin and bake for 40 minutes.
4. DONE

Easiest. Cake. Ever.


Chocolate Icing

Ingredients:
1 cup icing sugar
1 heaped tablespoon cocoa powder
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 drop peppermint essence (that is, if you want it to be mint flavoured. If you'd rather just plain chocolate icing, you can just leave out the peppermint essence)

Method:

1. Mix all ingredients until smooth.
2. Ice completely cool cake with a hot knife.

from Afternoon Tea (by Frankie Magazine)