This May and June thousands of people in the UK, USA and Canada are taking part in the Live Below The Line Challenge by the Global Poverty Project. This challenge asks people to spend £1 or less, per person, for food and drink every day for five days in a bid to help us understand the challenges faced by the 1.2 billion people around the world living in extreme poverty. One of the people undertaking this challenge is my friend Jill Clark. She, along with many others, are fundraising for crucial anti-poverty initiatives, and you can donate here.
This month, for Choclette’s We Should Cocoa food blogging challenge over at Chocolate Log Blog, we have been challenged to make a chocolate cake for less than £1.
At first, I wasn’t even sure it was possible, but the first cake recipe that sprang to mind was Clara’s Arizona Devil’s Food Cake, a handwritten recipe in my cookery notebook from my childhood. I’m not sure where the original recipe came from, but it was the first chocolate cake recipe I made when I got into baking around the age of 12.
It’s my cheap, fail-safe go-to chocolate cake recipe. It also makes a large two-layer cake, so why not halve the recipe and see how much it would cost?
Using the cheapest ingredients I could find in our local supermarket a half batch of Clara’s Arizona Devil’s Food Cake comes in at 92 pence. It also makes a reasonably sized cake; enough for 6 to 8 people. Plus, it’s delicious! There is no compromise on flavour.
Here’s the breakdown:
Cookeen vegetable fat: 69p for 250 grams. 56 grams = 15.4p
Lyle & Tate Fairtrade granulated sugar: £3-85 for 5kg. 186 grams = 14.3p
Tesco Everyday Value eggs: £1-35 for 15. 2 eggs = 18p*
Tesco Everyday Value plain flour: 30p per kg. 140 grams = 4.2p
Tesco bicarbonate of soda: £6-36 per kg. 1 tsp = 0.03p
Tesco cocoa powder: £1-99 for 250 grams. 30 grams = 23.9p
Dr. Oetker Madagascan vanilla with seeds: 39.8p per 10ml. 1/2 tsp = 10p
Tesco British UHT full fat milk: 80p per litre. 76ml = 6p
Tesco distilled vinegar: 59p for 568ml. 1 tsp = 0.5p
Silver Spoon icing sugar: £1-88 per kg. 5 grams = 0.009p
Grand Total: 92p
*I didn’t use these eggs, but I have, in the past. I was given a half dozen gorgeous blue-shelled Shetland hen’s eggs recently, and those were used in this particular cake, so the total cost for this photographed cake was only 74 pence!
I was really surprised to learn that the most expensive ingredient in this recipe was the vanilla. The original recipe calls for 2 tsp and to halve it would cost 19.9p, taking the recipe over the £1 mark, but 1/2 tsp is sufficient, especially as I used Madagascan vanilla with seeds.
There was no money in the budget to make a frosting for this cake but I wanted to serve it with something. Fishing around in the deep freeze I found two ice cream containers filled with a mixture of frozen black and red currants, harvested from a friend’s garden surplus last year. These free berries were combined with 3.9p worth of granulated sugar to make a purée, so the recipe still falls below the £1 budget.
I do have some of my friend’s blackcurrant cuttings growing in my garden. This is year three, so I am hoping they will be big enough (and sheltered enough by the willow trees I planted last year) to start producing fruit of their own. Blackcurrant bushes are inexpensive enough to buy and once they get going you’ve got a yearly supply of fresh fruit. If you’ve got a glut you’re trying to use up why not try my friend Jane’s cassis recipe.
Alternatively, foraged hedgerow fruit could be used such as raspberries or blackberries. My Canadian childhood summers were filled with days picking and eating these wild fruits.
I really liked the combination of rich chocolate cake with the tart blackcurrant purée. The children liked having their names spelled out in purée on their dessert plates, but it was too tart for their tastes.
I also liked the fact this cake could be served in eight reasonably sized slices. Quite often a large frosted cake will call to me, silently, late at night, from the fridge. “Come! Come eat me! You want to eat all of the cake!” Then, slice by slice, I make the cake disappear from the fridge only to reappear as excess weight on my hips and thighs. There was just enough of this cake for each of us to have a slice after tea for pudding, one for me late at night and two for the older children’s packed lunchboxes the next day. At 11.5 pence per slice, that’s not bad!
£1 Devil's Food Cake with Blackcurrant Purée
Ingredients
Devil's Food Cake
- 56 grams white vegetable fat (eg. Cookeen, Crisco)
- 186 grams granulated sugar
- 2 free-range eggs
- 140 grams plain flour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 30 grams cocoa powder
- 113 ml boiling water
- 1/2 tsp Madagascan vanilla with seeds
- 76 ml full fat milk
- 1 tsp distilled white vinegar
- 5 grams icing sugar to serve
Blackcurrant purée
- 250 grams blackcurrants
- 50 grams granulated sugar
- 3 tbsp water
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Instructions
For the Devil's Food Cake
- Preheat oven to 180 C/ 350 F
- Grease and flour a 6" round cake tin
- Cream together vegetable fat and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add eggs and beat well.
- Mix cocoa powder and boiling water together in a small saucepan. Gently heat and bring to a simmer. Simmer until it thickens slightly.
- In a medium sized bowl, sift together flour and bicarbonate of soda.
- Stir vinegar into the milk and add to the egg mixture along with the flour mixture and cocoa mixture.
- Stir well until thoroughly combined.
- Spoon batter into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
- Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- When completely cool sift the icing sugar over the top.
- Cake will keep for several days stored in an airtight container. Serve with blackcurrant purée.
For the Blackcurrant Purée
- Mix blackcurrants, water and sugar together in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer.
- Simmer until the berries are softened, stirring occasionally, for about 5-7 minutes.
- Purée mixture with a hand blender and press through a fine wire sieve.
- Serve purée with slices of cake.
Honeycat Cookies
I love baking cakes and this one looks amazing. So professional looking too.
aw thanks! 😀
Bargain! Looks delicious too! x
I am drooling! Thank you! I am going to be a devil…..
What an amazing cake for such a value price! Bet it tastes fab.
OMG totally trying out this recipe. It looks lush.
Laura x
This is an impressive looking cake. I love the way you’ve decorated it and that you made a blackcurrant puree – I should have thought of it as my colleague gave me some blackberries from her garden which are in my freezer.
Thank you 🙂 I was trying to posh it up a bit and still remain frugal at the same time! Blackberries would be lovely too.
This looks amazing!! Yum #TastyTuesdays
Thanks Tina! 🙂
This looks so delicious and the photos you took are amazing! #tastytuesdays
Looks so nice. I have all the ingredients in my cupboard too! I just need the vanilla with seed! What I love is that it is not expensive to do this at all! I am always trying to scrimp as the money is not good in my household so this is helpful =) #TastyTuesday
Plain vanilla will do, I just happened to have some with seed in it. Our local shops seem to have stopped stocking the Dr. Oetker plain vanilla – it’s now the Madagascan stuff with seeds. I hope you get a chance to make the cake, you’ll love it! 🙂
Wow how pretty are your cake stills, this sounds like a perfect chocolate cake to me! Thanks for linking up to #tastytuesdays
Thank you 🙂
Ok I’m pretty much blown away by this £1 cake. I thought the 5 minute microwave cakes were clever! This looks absolutely amazing, I will have to Pin it and attempt it one day when I become a more confident baker 🙂
Oh do go for it! It’s a dead easy cake to make, no baking confidence is required 🙂
Can only concurr. That looks divine, and so professional. Just goes to show what you can do for a £1. Last week I had a go at making some under £1 recipes up myself….impressed with the results, but also made me conscious of quite how hard you have to work to make your money stretch that far….I would really really struggle with a five day challenge let alone having to live on much lower income.
One of the things I like most about your approach that it’s not just about going to the supermarket and buying cheapest indgredients….foraging, growing your own and bartering can all help cut costs and add to overall sustainability. Great #TastyTuesday.
It’s really not easy to make your money stretch without compromising on flavour and quality. I would struggle with the five day challenge too, which is why I didn’t sign up for it this year. Maybe next! Thank you for your lovely comment 🙂
This is my kind of dessert! It looks absolutely declicous. Thank you so much for sharing 🙂 #TastyTuesdays
So glad you like the look of it, thank you! 🙂
That is AMAZING you did it under a pound. Way to go you. I love the presentation too. Looks amazing and sounds so delicious. #tastytuesdays
Thank you 🙂 I’m quite pleased how well the photos turned out (new camera!) and that it managed to come in under the £1 mark!
Wow. What a stunning looking cake. This has been the most eye opening challenge. Well done for bringing it in in price so well.
Thank you Dom, it’s a great challenge and I had no idea if it could be done or not. It will be interesting to see if anyone comes up with a frosted cake!
Good vanilla is so gosh darn expensive – it’s like adding caviar to something! And once you factor in good chocolate, butter, and eggs, the price of a cake can certainly climb. But I’m loving this budget-friendly version – and so decadent to boot…
I had no idea it was as expensive as it is until now. My normal cake uses 40 pence worth of the cheaper stuff, never mind the proper vanilla I use (I’ll have to cost that one up to see).
Even with such a low budget you’ve managed to create something looking so divine! I don’t think I’ve ever tried chocolate and blackcurrant together before but your photos and post have really made me want to now!
I recall seeing a chocolate and blackcurrant combination in the We Should Cocoa Chocolates challenge I hosted last year. Thought it sounded interesting and the flavours really do work well together!
That looks amazing Elizabeth. I would never have believed something so delicious-looking could have been made for less than a pound. Well done you! x
Thank you Vohn! 😀
childhood chocolate cake recipes are the best – makes me wonder how much my childhood chocolate cake would cost as it is quite basic and I prefer richer cakes these days – your devil’s food cake look delicious and rich – and the berries sound like a wonderful way to finish it off
They certainly are. They have that food nostalgia factor added to them!
Oh that looks so professional Elizabeth – who would have though it was only 11p a slice. Well done. I knew vanilla was going to be expensive so I didn’t use it, but I didn’t actually cost it up. It’s quite shocking to see just how expensive it is. I make my own extract, so I’m now wondering how much cheaper that is. Serving the cake with blackcurrant puree is a lovely idea and the drizzle is very effective. Thank you for joining in with this month’s challenge.
So glad you like it, Choclette – have to say I thoroughly enjoyed eating it! Thanks for hosting such a fab, inspirational challenge.