Birthday Monster!

My oldest monster is 13 today. Thirteen. THIRTEEN. A TEENAGER.

What scares me the most is I remember *being* thirteen. And it seems like last week.

I feel old.

As usual, I am making a lot of Alex's favorite foods for dinner. Today started with The Baking Of The Birthday Cake, once I shoved the kid out the door to go to school. Of course, it had to be dairy free with spelt flour, so that Alan could partake. Can't have birthday cake that the papa cannot eat.

This is everything you need to make a delicious chocolatey chewy fudgey dense birthday brownie:

Actually, I am missing the MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT.

Without my coffee, nothing was going to happen. Getting to bed at 3a.m is not a good way to get a shit load of work done.

So back to the cake.
Set the oven to 350 Degrees
In a stand mixer add:
3 eggs
2 cups brown sugar (ok, I ran out of brown sugar after a cup and a bit and had to use demerera sugar, but who cares)
a good wodge of vanilla (more about my vanilla later)

Beat on a medium speed until its nice and light in color.

Add:
1 cup Extra virgin olive oil and beat some more.

In a water bath, melt some dark chocolate, preferably 70% cacao or more. I used about 2-3 oz. or so. To be honest, I didn't measure. I just threw whatever I had in a pot and set it to melt.

In a separate dish, sift together:
1 1/4 cup spelt flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 TBS baking powder

Once its all sifted, add it to the egg, sugar and oil mixture, and turn the machine on to *just* combine. DO NOT OVERWORK. Add the melted chocolate and combine it in as few spins as possible.

Grease a square pan and then line it with tin foil and oil that. Pour the fudgey, delicious, tempting and beautiful batter in. Pop it in the oven before you eat it raw. It just simply won't do to have a birthday boy with no birthday cake because of a greedy baker.

Bake for about 50 minutes.
Cool and hide the cake until it is time to sing "happy birthday" or you might find strange little bits missing off it.

And there you have it. Delicious, chewy, fudgey, yummy, chocolately goodness.


Now back to my vanilla. I adore vanilla. So I make my own extract. Supremely easy. Just shove a bunch of vanilla beans in a large glass jar, and fill with vodka. Put it in a cupboard for a month, and shake it periodically. Voila. Vodka. I mean Vanilla.

I just keep topping it up with more vanilla beans and more vodka. It makes a mean White Russian too.