“I don’t know what to do for Father’s Day,” I lamented to Natalie during morning tea at work.

“Why don’t you make him something?”

I brightened. Yeah. Yeah! I could bake dad a cake. Dad likes chocolate. I’ll bake him a chocolate mud cake! With my lack of kitchen experience widely known, nothing would be more special than baking dad a cake from scratch.

On Saturday morning, I walked to the shops, clutching my internet print-out recipe. I managed to find everything except marsala. What’s marsala? Some kind of cheese, I suppose. Oh wait. I need two tablespoons of it. It must be a liquid. Maybe it’s a cream cheese.

I spent five minutes wandering up and down the dairy refrigerators, looking for something with the word ‘marsala’ in it. Nothing. Finally, I pulled out my mobile phone and called Damjan.

“Good morning, Damjan! I’m in the supermarket. I’m baking a cake for dad but I can’t find something called marsala. I think it’s a kind of cheese…”

“Marsala? [slight pause] It’s a wine. A sweet wine. Anything fortified will do.”

Wine??

I went home and read the recipe over lunch. To minimise my unco-ness, I memorised it. At 2:30 PM, I decided I was ready.

Slowly, I began chopping the chocolate. I mixed up the first stage batter. “Cook over simmering water”, it said. So I filled a wok with water then floated the pot in the simmering water.

I managed to go through the recipe without any mistakes and with no help from mum, who had run away from the kitchen so that she wouldn’t have to watch my clumsiness. I only had to ask her opinion once.

“Mum, I need three and a half eggs. What should I do?”

“…Just use four eggs.”

What kind of recipe asks for three and a half eggs, you ask? Well, the internet recipe required 262.5 mL of cream. Yet the bottle I bought contained 300 mL. I didn’t want to have 37.5 mL of cream left over. So I did the only logical thing. I increased all the quantities by 14% so that I could use all the cream. Which is why I needed 3.42 eggs.

The whole baking exercise took three hours. I went out in the evening, came back at 2:30 AM and complete the cake with frosting (“ganache“) and cocoa dusting. Then I had to wash the pots and pans. What can I say, it was a late night.

The next morning, I bounced out of bed. Proudly, I served dad a slice of mud cake garnished with strawberries. “Happy Father’s Day!” I said.

“That looks pretty good, Joan. Did you use all Home Brand ingredients?”

“Da-ad! Do you know I cost $99 an hour? This is an expensive cake!”

The cake turned out wonderfully. If you visit me before Tuesday, you can try a piece.

Joan’s recipe for rich chocolate mud cake

• 205 g butter
• 228 mL thickened cream
• 0.38 cup castor sugar
• 0.285 cup brown sugar
• 319 g dark chocolate, chopped
• 2.28 tsp instant coffee
• 2.28 tbsp Chinese ginger cooking wine (or marsala, if you must)
• 3.42 eggs
• 1.14 cup plain flour
• 0.57 cup self-raising flour
• 0.57 cup cocoa
• 171 g dark choclate, extra
• 0.285 cup thickened cream, extra
• extra cocoa for dusting
• strawberries for garnishing

1. Combine the butter, cream, sugars, chocolate, coffee and ginger wine in a heat proof bowl.
2. Cook over simmering water, stirring regularly until smooth.
3. Allow to cool completely. Wash the cooking tools.
4. Beat in the eggs and fold in the sifted flours and cocoa.
5. Pour into a buttered and lined pan about 14% bigger than a 22 cm pan, and bake for about 46 minutes in a fan-forced oven at 152°C.
6. Cool. Wash the cooking tools.
7. Combine the extra chcolate and cream in a heat proof bowl.
8. Cook over simmering water, stirring until smooth.
9. Refrigerate until cool.
10. Remove cake from oven. Cool. (I thought it was, anyway.)
11. Go out to a party. Come back nine hours later.
12. Take the ganache out of the fridge. Poke it. Realise you’ve stuffed up because the thing’s set. Put it in the microwave for 20 seconds to soften it.
13. Dust heavily with the cocoa in one corner. Try to spread the cocoa around the cake with a bread knife.
14. Wash the cooking tools.
15. Go to bed. I said, go to bed!

(Click here for the original recipe.)