Todays Savings Secret....bake!

  Best ever Chocolate Cake!   This one recipe has literally saved me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in bought café treats, canteen cakes for my daughter, birthday and other celebration cakes, and cakes to gift. It really is the best ever.   Just one batch of these would retail for up to $70 at a cutesy cupcake or muffin outlet, and the ingredients cost less than $6! Better the change in my pocket than theirs, I think.   I make this cake in some form or another, at least once a month. It gets turned into choc caramel muffins as above, which I make simply by half filling the muffin pans, adding a teaspoonful of Nestle` Caramel Top 'n Fill, and topping with more cake batter. It becomes birthday cake. In a heart shaped tin, it's a Valentines Day dessert without equal. As a loaf cake, iced with pastel green peppermint icing, and garnished with fresh mint, it's a gorgeous addition to an afternoon tea. Frosted with piped butter icing, it becomes pretty cupcakes for my granddaughters.   By leaving the cocoa out and adding vanilla extract, it becomes the most sublime white cake ever. It's perfect with or without icing, and most times I just dust it with a little icing sugar (powdered sugar for my U.S. friends) and sprinkle with edible rose petals as seen here.   In short, you need no other cake recipe and you'll never buy another boxed cake mix....well except to make my cake mix cookies found here!   This is quite a runny mixture so don't be put off when it seems less thick than your usual cake batter. Also be aware that the temperature of the oven is deliberately lower than usual.   2 Cups Flour
2 Cups Sugar
3/4 Cup Cocoa
2 Teaspoons Baking Soda
2 Eggs  1 Teaspoon Salt
1/2 cup milk combined with 1/2 cup yoghurt
 1 Cup Vegetable Oil
1½ Teaspoons Vanilla Extract or Essence
1 Cup Boiling Water

Preheat Oven to 150C.
 Lightly grease and flour a 22cm x 35cm (or thereabouts) baking dish or grease, flour and line a similar sized cake tin. You can also use this to make cupcakes or muffins or loaves.
Place all the ingredients above into a mixing bowl.
Mix at medium or medium high speed until all ingredients are blended and smooth.
Pour into greased and floured pans.
Bake for 1 hr.
Test by sticking with knife. If it comes out clean, it's done!
Allow to cool.   Perfection!   Why would you buy café` treats at up to $8 each, or pack your childrens lunch boxes with inferior mass produced treats in icky wrapping, when you could bake this cake, in whichever form you prefer, and save you hip pocket and your taste buds, a whole lotta trouble....   ...Mimi...
...Mimi...