Super Tasty Chocolate Cake!

Here's an easy recipe for super tasty chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. Seriously, this recipe is drool worthy, and almost heart stoppingly good due to the ridiculously huge amount of chocolate involved.

So you might want to pace yourself eating. You know, like half the cake today and the other half tomorrow :P

Ok, jokes aside, don't do that. You'll injure yourself.

Not bad, huh?

My initial plan was to make rose cupcakes yesterday...  but I ended up making this chocolate cake instead. So sue me. 

One word - YUM.

And you know what else? It's easy to make, too...

See? The best part for me is that ganache is so simple and quick to make, requires basically no skill or effort, and makes any cake look super fancy - and taste AMAZING.

But onto the important stuff.

As readers of my blog will know, I tend to preach a lot about the dangers of unsustainable palm oil. If you're unfamiliar with the issue, check out Zoos Victoria's Don't Palm Us Off campaign.

As if worrying about palm oil wasn't enough, there happens to be a major issue with any chocolate recipe, and that issue is: where did the cocoa come from?

I mentioned in my recipe to make sure you use 'happy cocoa', what I mean by that is make sure whatever brand you buy doesn't obtain its cocoa via child slave labour in the Ivory Coast. Because believe it or not almost half of the world's cocoa supply is farmed by child slaves.

Unbelievable, huh? :(

I always use Cadbury chocolate and cocoa because I know it's a brand that's safe to use. To find out more about the brands you buy check out their websites or email them. You can find out more here about both the slavery issue and what different chocolate companies are doing about it.

Because here's the thing. Chocolate is amazing. I love it almost as much as my husband (some days more, if I'm honest) but I couldn't enjoy a chocolate cake like the one I made yesterday knowing I could be contributing to the ongoing slave labour of children. While it's an absolute travesty that companies are allowed to obtain cocoa (and goodness know how many other things) unethically and at the expense of the lives and well-being of less fortunate people, we as consumers can take a stand by avoiding brands that think it's ok to exploit children. 

So make sure you're an informed consumer! Then you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Back to the deliciousness in the picture above, you may notice that this particular chocolate cake sports small red fondant roses - I'll be posting how to make those tomorrow :)