C.A.M - Mud Cake Scratch-Off - Bluehue's Chocolate Mud Cake

So as I sit here typing this I can smell Bluehue's awesome mud cake baking in my oven. Obviously I can't compare the first 3 criteria yet (Flavor, Texture/Crumb & Moistness) but I can definitely talk about the last 2 criteria: Ease of Making & Cost.

Ease of Making:
Well this is definitely far easier than your usual white or yellow cake. You start out by heating the chocolate, butter, coconut milk, sugar, and instant coffee in one pot on the stove till it's all melted together then leave it to cool to room temperature.

Mmmm melted chocolate...

While that was cooling I then sifted all the dry ingredients together, measured out my vanilla and put that to the side with the 2 eggs to add later. All of this probably only took me a few minutes, after which I went to tend to the kids while waiting for the chocolate mixture to finish cooling down.
I gave it about an hour before I went ahead to the next step which is basically just mixing everything together. The chocolate mixture was still a bit warm, I probably could have left it for another half hour but I'm impatient, lol!

All the waiting ingredients

I poured the mixture into a 10" round pan - here's where I started to have a little bit of confusion. See, normally you need to grease or flour your cake pans - even if using baking paper you normally still grease the pan - but the recipe only stated to line the pan with baking paper. I didn't want to risk having the cake stick so I decided to grease the pan anyway. The recipe also didn't state what size pan to use but it looked like a lot of batter so I decided to go with the 10" pan since I don't have anything bigger. Once I put the mixture into the pan it still looked like a lot - like perhaps it could have made 2 cakes. Then I noticed that in a couple of spots the recipe refers to tinS but in other spots it only refers to 1 tin, so I don't know if the quantities in the recipe are actually for 2 cakes or 1. I crossed my fingers and went with 1.

Cost:
So I worked out the costing for each of the cakes based on the pricing of the brands/products I normally purchase from my local supermarket. Everyone's costing would be different based on local pricing or preferred products. I calculated that Bluehue's chocolate mud cake cost me $8.82AUD to make, which is the more expensive cake out of all of the ones I'm making for the scratch-off. However, it's only a difference of $1-2 so the taste may more than make up for that.
Using the coconut milk is what makes it more expensive since most of the other products can be bought in bulk and it's only a small percentage that gets used as opposed to the coconut milk which gets used nearly completely in just one cake. It also has nearly twice the amount of caster sugar as the other recipes with the exception of the AWW Mississippi Mud Cake which has the same amount. Caster sugar is quite expensive locally since the largest pack I can find around here is 1kg which only makes 2-3 cakes.
However you need to take into account that the recipes from the scratch-off don't all make the same size cake. The recipe I'll be using from Exclusively Foods makes a 16cm/6" round cake, the AWW Mississippi Mud Cake makes a 22cm/8.5" round, and Pam's Mud Cake makes a 20cm/8" round, and Bluehue's Mud Cake made a 10" round. The $1-2 difference probably works itself out in the end anyway once the size difference is taken into account.

For anyone interested in knowing how to work out the costing, I may do a post on how I work it out further down the track.

Update:
So the cake finished baking after 1 hour, 45 minutes and smelt awesome. I couldn't resist eating a bit of the crust which tasted great but obviously the cake will taste much better after being allowed to set up for a few days and being frozen to improve the flavor. It had quite a large dome and cracked along the top which I understand is pretty common when making mud cakes. I'll bake the rest of the scratch-off cakes the same way but in the future when making mud cakes I think I'll use a foil tent over the cake while baking, even baking strips around the pan, and possibly put a pan of water in the oven while baking to prevent such a large dome and the cracking across the top.
Using just 1 pan worked out fine, the cake baked right to the top of my 3" high pan and the dome rose probably about an inch above that. Perfect height for torting into 3 layers.