Chocolate cake

Following on from last week's post about my burning desire to cook now I have NO time, I am convinced the internet is deliberately playing on this and my insatiable appetite for the sweet and calorific.

I've just started reading blogs for the first time since the demise of Google reader. On day one of setting up Feedly this chocoholic delight popped into my feed. Sour cream chocolate cake via The Kitchn. My ambitions peaked when I remembered there was sour cream in my fridge, but the miniature humans were too busy feeding for such folly.

And then, the very next day I saw this on Instagram, courtesy of Vee who posts the most amazing photos of her Welsh Terrier, Bear, at veeandbear. Surely the similarities in appearance are no coincidence. The universe wants me to bake ridiculously decadent chocolate cake. Or, at the very least, eat it.

Leela Cyd, creator of the sour cream chocolate cake puts forward a very good cause for baking your own birthday cake, and relishing the experience. It's a lovely read.

When it comes to celebrations, Stephanie Alexander's whiskey and raisin chocolate cake has been a favourite of m
ine in the past, winning me over with its richness and its ability to feed a crowd.

Do you have a go-to chocolate cake recipe for celebrations?

Not just a humble muffin

What would you cook if you had all the time in the world?

For so many people, life gets busy and we stop making time for the hobbies we enjoy, squeezing them out with work, home and social commitments. It's not until life takes a dramatic turn that you realise how much time we used to have. Sam and I frequently reflect on this, asking "why did we take all our spare time for granted at uni", or "remember how little we HAD to do on the weekends before we bought a house".

So here I am, 6 weeks after the birth of our beautiful twins with a feeling of déjà vu. I am itching to cook elaborate dishes now that I have no time, and wishing that I'd tried all those new recipes before the munchkins came along.

Instead, I settled for baking some very basic banana muffins. Pouncing on an overripe banana and a rare quiet twenty minutes. They might not be elaborate but there's certainly something soothing about cooking basic wholesome food using ingredients you have at home.

They're not bad with a cup of tea, either.