"Better the devil you know..."

"... than the devil you don’t", or so the saying goes, meaning that sometimes it is best dealing with someone or something you know (but find difficult) than with the unknown. Is this true? The other school of thought is ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ which can open doors for you aplenty. Which one sways you? Do you thrive on change and live on the edge or are you more of a home-comforts kind of person who likes the here-and-now and would happily stay there?

Last night I made Devil’s Food Cake for a colleague who is turning forty this weekend. The ingredients of the cake are made in three different bowls. Firstly, cocoa was mixed with boiling water and muscovado sugar, mixed and set-aside. Secondly, butter and caster sugar were mixed in another bowl with some vanilla extract. Thirdly, the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda were mixed in a further bowl. All of the ingredients were then gradually mixed alternately with eggs. The batter was poured into two lined, buttered sandwich tins and baked in the oven according to Nigella’s recipe.

Once in the oven the frosting was made by melting butter with muscovado sugar and boiling water, adding chunks of dark chocolate and then mixing until melted. This mixture was then left for an hour to become spreadable. I never thought it would - it seemed quite oily and like it would just slide off the cake. However, it worked its magic and the overall result was a devilishly good chocolate cake, filled and covered with the dense topping. This takes rich cake to a whole new level!


I attempted to decorate the cake with smarties, in a 4-0 fashion, but gave up and went for a more random approach. It was also adorned with 40 candles which I felt added a certain special something (dontchathink)?

Goddess Mx