Recipe: Chocolate Cake

I love this cake ... now of course I feel the need for a coffee to go with it. What ever happened to really good, thick, coffee anyway? The best coffeee is either in Erfurt (must be the heavy metals in the water) or in Vienna ...

300 gram dark chocolate
75 ml cream
200 gram butter
200 gram sugar
6 eggs

Melt chocolate and cool.
Whip softened butter with sugar.
Whip egg yolks with melted chocolate.
Whip egg whites. Whip cream.
Gently fold all ingredients together.
Pour into cake pan. Bake 25 minutes 300 F/150 C.
Let cake cool 3-4 hours.

… I swear the battery on this laptop has a half life of 15 minutes … but let’s not go there – I fear that my gut pounding, tear choking prose might make many of you nervous – therefore the tone of my discourse while the cake bakes will be much cheerier, off key, bouncing, fluffy, jelly jammy ….. me? Me, I’m dead tired. Tired of eating over-cooked fish in other people’s restaurants and tired of repacking chocolate sculptures into bubblewrap filled boxes …

…but I have a flight to catch kids – have to fly to Vienna to scare the straights with my chocolate perversions – scare the people right – you know, next time you stick a wad of chocolate into your mouth then think of the 200 000 plus that work as slave labour to get those cocoa beans into the shops … well, we’ll see how this plays in the big city right? Last year the small town punters loved it, goggled it up, literally walking about with the pieces in their grubby little hands licking them content as pigs in …. The big question is of course, will it play in Peoria?

Well, now I’m all out of licorice, the coffee maker is gurgling and screaming, and my man has just padded barefoot past my field of vision with a croissant in his teeth and a twinkle in his eye, so it’s time to go. Let’s keep this happy boys and girls – Vienna is a very long way away. It’s almost not even really western Europe, much – I mean, pull out your Atlases – it’s teetering on the brink of the Ottoman sultanates. You need patience – you need a taxi and a train and another train, a bus, a plane, yet another train, and a subway before you are there. But damn is the coffee worth the trip …

It’s drizzling rain as I enter the Museum Quartier 21, snuggled in between all those temples, all that art, all that money, all that pretence and whispered critique and well – the organiser of the show confided to me over a beer at 2 in the morning of my arrival that only “serious art” makes it here. Serious art. So I’m feeling pretty good. As you would, wouldn’t you? As you would.

7:00 pm. There is a hushed silence as I enter the roped off area in a sparkly blue body stocking wearing nothing else but a pair of swim flippers and accompanied by six dwarves dressed in sackcloth and ashes. The block of chocolate awaits me in trembling anticipation beneath the hot lights. The crowd holds it’s breath as the music crescendoes and I attack the chocolate block’s girth with a vigorous urgency and a battery of instruments including an electric toothbrush, a hair dryer, surgical tweezers, nose hair clippers, an electric whisk all lending a virile and yet somehow unclear significance to the performance.

When it is done I motion to the dwarves who wheel over the iron basket of glowing coals on squeeking coasters to my side. I remove one of the red hot branding irons from the fire and as the halogen spots explode in intensity ram the branding iron into the middle of the chocolate sculpture where it sizzles, leaving my initials. Then all is darkness and silence. The crowd goes absolutely, fucking, bananas … Vienna. Eat at Treszenewskis Buffet. Wear Dorothy Strange. Tear out your heart and cover it in marzipan. The coffee’s to die for and don’t forget to bring back some chocolate …