Hello and Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog.

This is my very first one, so bear with me and enjoy reading about my adventures cooking all of the recipes from Nigella Lawson's new book 'Kitchen'.

From time-to-time I may post about things other than cooking, after all, Nigella does sell a lifestyle that most women would like have a slice of, so I would like to share a bit of mine - not quite as glamorous but fun none-the-less (may I add that most of my ideas and thoughts revolve around food anyway)!

Just to set the scene a little, I am based in Yorkshire, live with my husband and gorgeous toddler who is rapidly approaching his second year. I work in the events industry and love music, books, fashion, culture and of course... food.

Enjoy.

Goddess Mx (meant in the loosest possible sense, believe me)!

Thursday 27 January 2011

"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

8 comments:

  1. Well .... I guess I am pretty much a home comforts kind of a girl BUT there are times when I feel the fear and do it anyway (one of my fave sayings by the way). If I hadn't I'd never have left Asutralia and I'd never have met my Husband!
    Great cake too, I'm sure the birthday boy was well pleased ;0)

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  2. Hard to do better than a rich chocolate cake (rather fond of my home comforts). Have yet to attempt a Devil's food cake, but I do like the sound of that icing. Thanks for following my blog.

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  3. Baking really is like magic sometimes, isn't it? Your cake looks so pretty!

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  4. My daughter would love a cake decorated with Smarties!

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  5. Hi there,
    I noticed you are following my blog and so I've popped over to look around. Well, what a surprise! Your blog concept is really cool and I look forward to following more of your posts/recipes throughout the year.

    As for this cake, I know it would be yummy! I think any chocolate Nigella recipe is a guaranteed sucess.

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  6. I'm all for random smarties too. Tried to do '3' in them last year and it didn't look right.

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  7. I love that this cake would have appealed at a 4-y-o as well. 4, 14, 40... who cares? ;) xx

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