The Perfect Mountain Mud Cake

Mount Taylor in Canberra. It’s my rocky mountain high, except it’s not that high, which is why I regularly go up and down and up and down, and sometimes up and down again. If it wasn’t so diminutive I wouldn’t need to torment myself in such a manner.

It’s recently rained a terrible shitload in Canberra; shitload being the layman’s understanding of a lot of anything. 230 years of rain in just under two hours, I’ve heard. Public sector gossip is hardly ever incorrect. Rain is great for the most part, except for the fact it turns my favourite mountain running track into a dangerous and unstable mud and sludge speedway.

I went up there the other day for the first time following The Rains. It was a treacherous mud-made death wish. When I went up a few days later it was the perfect consistency of water and dirt. I think of mountain dirt as a bit like icing on a cake. I think about mountain dirt quite a lot, particularly the exuberance one feels when it is the perfect consistency.

With the right temperature, the right ingredients and the right pan, you too can make the perfect chocolate mountain mud cake.

Here’s how:

Prep time: How long is a storm?
Cooking time: None required
Serves: Generally your arse on a baking tray

Method:

- Preheat sun to 38c
- Bring in the clouds
- Add 350 million cups of rainwater and 300 million cups of loose dirt (you will note these quantities make the cake completely shit so you will need to add more dirt as necessary if you don't want to die when sliding off your cake)
- Cocoa makes a great alternative to loose dirt, Willy Wonka
- Add 1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
- Beat dirt and water with an electric blender until slippery and dangerous
- Spread over mountain
- Finished.

Fortunately I am descended from a long line of mountain goats on my father’s side, so that’s quite convenient. I don’t have any evidence to verify this cross breeding program, but I do love running on mountains, lots of goathumans on my father’s side also love it, and I have four legs, so there’s that.

Brain fartin'. Travellin'.

It’s been a while since I felt a blog communicado coming on. My lemon zest for writing has been on the wane of late, which is probably a positive because it usually involves me spewing a constant stream of inane information, some of which sometimes makes sense on occasion.

I’ve been thinking a bit in recent times about how my brain garners me no favours. A few years ago it decided, in its great lack of valuable opinion or feedback, that it wanted to write The Novel one day and apparently I’m supposed to just go along with this harebrained idea that would require considerable skill, time and effort. I mean, what the feck? A fairly unreasonable and improbable goal. Thanks a lot, brain.

It certainly didn’t consult me in the decision making process, if there even was one, which is no great revelation.

Let’s write a book! Oh, great idea.
Let’s overstay our working holiday visa in England! Excellent plan.
And my personal favourite – let’s join the public sector! Oh, can we!?

ANYWAY. I’ve just purchased a new superlative suitcase for my next holiday later this year. My current suitcase has had a tough life, thanks to Qantas for losing it for six days and sending it on a round-the-world expedition to return it to me. Once I received it in Florida, it had so many airline sponsor stickers on it I thought it had joined a Formula One team as a Grid Suitcase.

I’ve barely recovered from my last rendezvous with the world’s airports, if we are being generous enough to consider New Zealand part of ‘the world’. It was six weeks ago, which is about 200 days, give or take. My trip to UnZud's aiports was tremendously successful, in no small part because it did not involve American airports.

Speaking of Other Countries, one of my favourite things about my forthcoming 5-week international to my Mother Country of England (not my Mother Country in the traditional understanding of mother country) is that fact that I’m not venturing to that place where the vast majority of French people live. Le bullet dodged.