Chocolate mistake cake

When I first started living simply, I had to learn a lot and make many mistakes before I felt that I knew what I was doing. The mistakes were an important part of my reinvention. Learning that results from a mistake is the best kind of learning. Instead of working through a step-by-step process, you start with a problem and you have to analyse the steps and work out why you went wrong. That involves active thinking instead of plain old following the steps, and you remember it.

I made a chocolate cake the other day. It was supposed to be my usual Nigella-inspired gluten-free and dairy-free chocolate cake, made with almonds.  Oh dear.

The recipe is:

• 150ml olive oil
• ½ cup cocoa mixed with ½ cup boiling water
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 150 grams almond meal
• ½ teaspoon bicarb soda
• pinch salt
• 200 grams castor sugar
• 3 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 170C.

1. Mix the cocoa and water together and stir until the cocoa has dissolved. Add the vanilla to the cocoa mix.
2. In a medium bowl, add almonds, bicarb and salt and mix together.
3. Into a mixer bowl, add the sugar, oil and eggs and beat on high for 3 minutes, when it will be light and fluffy. Pour in the cocoa mixture and mix in.
4. Take the mixer bowl off the stand and fold in the almonds, bicarb and salt.
5. Pour mixture into a prepared round cake tin that has been oiled on the sides and has a round of paper on the base.
6. Bake in oven for about 40 minutes.

The cake will rise up in the oven and deflate a little when it comes out.

And that last line alerted me to my mistake. My cake hadn't risen much. I went through the steps again in my mind and realised I hadn't added the oil.  So my cake was gluten-free, dairy-free and oil-free. LOL And it was delicious. It was moistly, densely, heavenly chocolate.

So this time my mistakes have taught me to pay more attention to what I'm doing and that leaving an ingredient out isn't always a catastrophe. Although don't bake bread without yeast because that always is.