Angry Baking 101 (Chocolate-Peanut Butter Lava Cake)

This is a cautionary tale. Usually, Kimberly and I enter the kitchen with equal parts zen and badassness - it's our time to de-stress, to dance around in our matching aprons and giggle a lot. We take time to create something not only delicious but something that is satisfyingly whole.

This was not one of those times. From the moment she walked into our apartment, it was clear that Kimberly was pissed. Her hands shook when she spoke, which for some reason reminded me of her tiny Shih-Tzu Phronsie, caffeinated. We had planned earlier on making some sort of dessert, and though I still had a sizeable amount of homework waiting, I could tell Kimberly needed some chocolate.

Our first mishap occurred approximately 2 minutes into the baking process. 

"Kimberly, did we remember to buy cocoa?"

"..."

And that's how we ended up at QFC at 9:30 at night, sprinting through the aisles to find a can of cocoa.

Despite this setback, things after that seemed to be going pretty smoothly. The recipe, which Kimberly got from a vegan baking class, called for one large baking dish, so we figured that we could get away with putting some of the batter in our one small baking dish, and eating the rest raw. We conservatively filled the baking dish 3/4 of the way full, but when even we could not eat all of the remaining batter, we put another generous heap on top. What the hell.

Little did we know.

15 minutes in,  it was puffy. 25 minutes in, it had a bit of a muffin top. 40 minutes in, we were scrambling to open all the windows and frantically fanning the smoke leaking out of the stovetop. 

You may be wondering why we bothered to write a blog post about a failed cake, but honestly, from where I'm sitting now, I can't really count it as a failure. As I write this, I am sprawled in Kimberly's bed, a pan of gooey, moist, chocolate-y goodness between us, and only one fork (we haven't done dishes in a while). Life is looking pretty damn good. Yeah, we fucked up. But considering we didn't wake up the entire building by setting off the fire alarm at 11:30pm last night and somehow still managed to salvage a surprisingly (mostly) intact cake, I'm pretty satisfied. 

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Lava Cake

Cake Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups sugar

3 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup cocoa

2 Tbsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups almond milk

1 stick vegan margarine

1/2 creamy peanut butter

4 tsp vanilla

Topping Ingredients:

1/2 sugar

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

3/4 cups cocoa

4 cups hot water

1. Stir all the dry ingredients together in a big bowl.

2. Melt the margarine and cool slightly. Combine the almond milk, margarine, and vanilla and then add to dry mixture.

3. Spread into a lightly oiled LARGE baking dish (at least two 8x8s or one 9x13 - preferably industrial sized)

4. Combine the sugars and the cocoa for the topping and sprinkle over the top of the cake.

5. Pour 4 cups of hot water over the top.

6. Bake at 325 degrees fahrenheit for 35-45 minutes (be careful lifting - it will be heavy)*

Recipe credit: Erica Fickeisen at the Tahoma Bakery (a wonderful person who bakes delicious things - her croissants go faster than a racehorse that has to pee)