Finnegan's Cake

Does baking count as a craft? Not sure, but it can certainly generate anecdotes, so I'm going to count it.

If you're in the Vegan Society, you can get free nutritional advice. Now I've been having a bit of hassle with Stroppy Sibyl the Cranky Colostomy, and I would have liked to talk to the stoma nurse; but unfortunately there are rather a lot of dodgy guts in this part of the country, and the stoma nurse is rushed off his feet. He's great when you've got him, but getting him is next to impossible. So I thought, right, I shall talk to the nutrition people at the Vegan Society and see if they can recommend anything that might help with a troublesome stoma. They did, and I had a very nice e-mail exchange with one of their dietitians; and I happened to mention to her that I don't have a regular oven, just a microwave. (I can't justify the energy consumption of an oven for a single person.) She suggested I might consider getting an air fryer. And I had, in fact, been mulling over possibly doing this very thing for a little while, so that decided me. I bought one.

I should have done it ages ago. The air fryer turned out to be a total game-changer. I no longer have to read all the small print on labels to check that things are microwaveable (granted, sometimes they are even when they don't say they are, but you don't always know), so I've been able to expand my range of meals considerably. I can have tofu again; technically you can cook that in a microwave, but not if you want it crisp (and the air fryer does that far and away better than regular frying, plus it doesn't stick!). I can do veggie burgers without having to get out the microwave grill, which does admittedly give excellent results but is a royal pain to clean. And, best of all, I get to make cakes again.

Most cakes, of course, aren't vegan. They usually contain eggs, and sometimes also milk. So I went looking online for vegan air fryer cake recipes, and, of course, the Internet obliged. And one of the first recipes I found was for a large chocolate cake with an ingenious ganache. I took one look at that and thought... right. That's what I'm baking for the concert. (I should explain that I've brought baking to concerts for many years. After all, making music is hungry work!)

Having said that, it was a rather strange recipe. The first thing I noticed that was odd was that it was raised with yeast. You didn't leave it to rise like bread; you just mixed the yeast in as if it were baking powder, and stuck the cake straight into the air fryer. Then I realised that it also failed to specify the size of the tin; so what I had to do was to calculate the weight of the cake from the ingredients, find another recipe which did specify the size of the tin, calculate the weight of that, and then do some maths. It turned out that this cake ought to fit nicely in my two 16 cm round silicone cake moulds (I can't quite bring myself to call them tins).

I hadn't made a cake raised with yeast before, so I decided I needed to test the recipe first. The results were really not a success. You know how in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, the dwarves bake dwarf bread, and it's substantial enough to be used as a weapon? Right... well, that was pretty much what I ended up with. I could barely get a knife through it. Moreover, it was nowhere near sweet enough for a cake. The chocolate hit was good, but still, it needed a lot of work.

Time for Test 2. I upped the sugar, mainly in the cake but a little in the ganache, and substituted baking powder for the yeast. When I came to take the first half of the cake out of the air fryer, I was a little startled at how well it had risen; it must have been twice the height it was in Test 1. And the words that immediately came into my head were "bedad, he revives, and see how he rises!", which is a line from the Irish song Finnegan's Wake. So, naturally, I realised that obviously what I had here was Finnegan's Cake.

Test 2 was pretty good, but it just needed a couple of small tweaks; it was inclined to get a little dry, so I added a chia seed "egg" for the concert version, and I also felt it needed a hint of some kind of spice. I eventually realised this was cardamom. The final version went to the Wigmore Hall at the beginning of October and was sent up to the green room, where there were 14 musicians; I think it was big enough for all of them to enjoy a slice.

Without further ado, here's the recipe, Wigmore version. (Please excuse the line spacing; the site automatically inserts a line between paragraphs and I don't want that in ingredient lists.)

For the cake: 1 rounded tbsp chia seed; 50-75 ml water; 6 cardamom pods (or a pinch of ground cardamom); 300 g plain wholemeal flour; 3 tsp baking powder; 50 g cocoa powder; a good pinch of salt; 250 g soft dark brown sugar; 350 ml plant milk; 60 g dark chocolate chips; 50 ml rapeseed oil; 45 ml date syrup; 2.5 ml pure vanilla extract.

For the ganache: 125 ml plant milk; 60 g icing sugar; 120 g dark chocolate chips; 1.5 ml pure vanilla extract; 60 g cashew or almond butter.

For the filling: 140-150 g black cherry jam.

If using cardamom pods, put them in the water and heat to near boiling point, then allow to cool to room temperature. Leave to infuse overnight in the fridge.

Shortly before you start baking, remove the cardamom pods (if using) from the water and discard. Add the chia seed to the water and let stand for about 15 minutes to thicken, stirring occasionally to incorporate any floating seeds. Meanwhile, gently heat the plant milk with the chocolate chips in the microwave (this should take about 2 minutes) and stir till they are well blended. If the chia mixture looks too thin after 10-15 minutes, add a little more chia; it should be about the consistency of a soft-set jam.

Put the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, sugar, and (if using) ground cardamom into a bowl, and mix till there are no obvious lumps of one ingredient. Add the chocolate mixture, chia mixture, oil, syrup, and vanilla. Meanwhile, preheat the air fryer to 160 C. Beat the mixture until smooth.

Fill two lined round 16 cm tins or silicone moulds with the mixture. Bake each one in the air fryer for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Using the same container as before, heat the plant milk and the chocolate chips for the ganache together in the microwave (this should take about 1 minute) and stir until blended. Add the icing sugar, nut butter, and vanilla, and stir thoroughly. Let stand for at least half an hour until cool and thick; it will probably need appreciably longer.

When the cake is cool, level it off if necessary (it does not always rise evenly). Fill with the jam, then completely cover with the ganache.