Ms Fifikins

I have taken on a new project, one that will no doubt help me reach one of my 101 in 1001 goals- baking new things. I am forever baking the same old things and not that I complain- I bake them as they are good, but variety is good, no?

A number of bloggers I follow blog at least twice a month with recipes from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book. A while ago, this book was chosen as a cook-along book- each week a new recipe is baked until the book is cooked! I am starting part way through, and although I have missed the cook-along of several recipes I want to try, I am pretty sure I will try them as they seem just lovely!

This week’s recipe is courtesy of Jennifer of The Rookie Baker. Catch the recipe over there, or other people’s efforts over here!

What a recipe to start with! I am glad I checked at the SMS site during the week to see how others had gone with this one. If I had pulled anything else out of the oven and it still wobbled I would have put it back in for another 20 minutes! But on cooling in the fridge it has developed a beautiful consistency!

I used frozen raspberries in the middle and did worry that not defrosting them may have had an impact, but indeed not! This is a winner! If I didn’t want to rush over and blog it I suspect I would be finishing off the entire cake in a sitting! I can see this becoming a dinner party standard recipe for me- it really is a winner!

Well it is my birthday soon and I do like cake…

It was my boss’s birthday today. It is actually a little strange thinking she is only 5 months older than me yet has been with the company since she was 17.

For her birthday I told her I would bake a cake. Now I adore cooking. I find it the ultimate form of relaxation, well apart from sitting in front of computer… When I was a vicar’s wife I loved cake stalls. I would bake for days and days and turn up with at least 8 different types of cakes, most of which had been doubled or tripled or more. I don’t bake regularly for my colleagues, but when I do it is appreciated, recipes asked for and ideas given!

I have often thought how wonderful it would be to have a café somewhere and actually bake the cakes to serve with the coffee instead of the mass produced crap that most places provide. Just imagine, decent coffee, homemade goodies, free wifi, varied lunch menu, good service… One day!

Back to the cake! I knew I wanted to bake a chocolate cake, but which one? I figured for a birthday it needed to be a double layer with chocolate icing. So I settled for Nigella’s ‘Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake’ from Feast. It is delectably easy- everything in a food processor (or in my case I just used Priscilla and the whisk attachment) and blend for a few minutes. Icing is a fudge icing with chocolate, butter, golden syrup, sour cream and icing sugar. I never thought I was a cake decorator, but the comments today suggest otherwise. Amazing what some sugar flowers can do!

Of course with this detox, I didn’t eat any, but the comments were pretty good, well comments and oohs and aahs! Plus the office team wanted me to bake something for them as they missed out. Think I might be able to arrange that! Plus the kids have asked for some more baking… Might be a relaxing couple of weekends.