So this month there is no recipe, as the guinea pigs (my esteemed colleagues) failed in their part of the bargain. On Saturday 16th, there were several plates, bowls, cups and a fair bit of cutlery to be rescued from the staff room, hence no cake is deserved! However, I must apologise to the three good guinea pigs (sounds like a children’s story) who were away for the weekend when the cake was forfeit, and still have been bringing stuff back to the cafe since being told (not just them, but mainly). But they still aren’t getting cake.
I must say that they picked an especially bad month to slip up on, as my birthday happens to be close enough to the day when I would have brought in the cake that I was going to go for a real treat. It’s Denver Chocolate Pudding (pictured below), a really good rich chocolate sponge with an even better sauce underneath. 
I blame the dominance of this pudding in my childhood for my fussiness when it comes to chocolate cake, I usually find it either too dry of not rich enough or, worst of all, both.
And no, I didn’t make it just so that I could put a picture up to taunt the guinea pigs. The pictured pudding was made by my mother last week for an event she was going to. She also got very upset when I said that I wanted to put the recipe on here: I have been banned from sharing the recipe!
However, I will give some hints about how I have taken to tweaking disappointing cake recipes to fix the above problems:
1. Always brush with apricot jam before icing (or instead of icing). This will add moisture, seal the surface so the cake cannot loose it’s moisture, and the apricot boosts the chocolate flavour. You will want to heat the jam for a few seconds in the microwave until it is runny enough to do this, but be careful – trust me, you do not want to burn yourself with hot sugar.
2. If the recipe asks for either water or milk, add instant coffee. Boil it up with which ever liquid first and cool as necessary, but make it strong. You wont taste the coffee in the end cake, it will just give the chocolate flavour a boost. This is actually a trick used in the Denver.
3. (As long as it’s not already in the recipe) Add salt. Just a pinch, trust me it makes a difference.
4. Use both 2 & 3 in the icing. If it’s butter icing base, boil up the hot milk with a lot of instant coffee to add to the mixture to let it down when it starts to get too firm initially. But taste after mixing in each addition.
5. Add chilli. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I like the added warmth, and in moderation most people wont know unless you tell them. I have previously put a full teaspoon of Cayenne Pepper into a cupcake batter, and more into the icing, not told anyone and watched them all disappear at a great rate of knots – and nobody guessed. But again taste as you add, I wouldn’t trust that pepper not to be over a year old in which case the flavour would be less potent.
Sweet Bribery 