Happy New Year! I can say that right? Even though it is now the end of February, lol. However I genuinely mean it, Happy New Year to all of you reading this and I hope that you have had a great start to 2019. Can you imagine that we can finally say 2020 is around the corner! I know the year just started but these little thoughts pop up in my head when I'm daydream/ procrastinating. It's the little thoughts that I have that make me question life, things etc, but either way for a person who has been wearing glasses since I was five I can finally say I have 2020 vision, because I see it approaching next year, HA!
Bad jokes aside, it's been a while since I last wrote and that I can only blame myself. The last post I wrote I think it was October (jeez), the past couple months have been relatively busy. November, we had family members visit in order to celebrate Mama Weich's big birthday bash. Which was a success I had made an incredible birthday cake using the Scranline's Mars Bar Cake recipe and some Pina colada and G&T cupcakes. December, it was the season to be jolly which meant loads of Christmas cookies, mulled wine, trying to find decent Christmas presents, oh and more family members visiting. January, trying to get rid of that holiday weight, celebrating birthdays ( including mine! ) and getting back into a work routine. I can say the past couple months have been fun, exciting, and stressful. Any time that I would bake or cook something new, I told myself "I should put this on the blog" but I didn't because to be honest, I got lazy. Writing has never been my strong suit. I struggled with it in school, university and even now. So for some people who can easily write a page or two within an hour, I struggle with writing maybe half a page during that time. So with all these new things which I created, they just kept on piling up as something to write about. I just didn't have the energy to do it. Well that's why I'm writing today, trying to build myself the energy to keep baking/ cooking and write about it because that's what I love to do and it makes me happy (not the writing part, but the baking, cooking and eating part).
February hasn't been the best month for me. There has been an accumulation of events which happened to me that made me feel downhearted and ignorant. To the point where I pictured in my mind, that my life is going through the domino affect. From one bad thing all the bad things followed. Either way I have been feeling relatively blue for the past couple of weeks. Motivating myself to do work and getting myself in happier spirits has been a challenge. I knew that I had to change my mindset from being negative nelly to being a positive polly. So a couple of days ago I did what always make me happy, I baked. It was the best decision I had done in a while.
I baked my mother's traditional "Never Fail Chocolate Cake" recipe, however though I got creative and instead of using butter in the recipe I used vegetable oil. Now firstly we were running out of butter in the house so, the next best thing I used was vegetable oil. I really like cake recipes that have oil in them, I find that it keeps the cake spongy and the flavour gets better with age. Further to adding the vegetable oil, I added baking powder (which I see, is a component used in many oil based cakes), cardamon, and coffee (for the flavour). After I baked the cake I used the rest of the butter left in the house and made a buttercream icing with a bit of rose water (which my lovely Jordanian friend brought for me all the way from Jordan). The rose buttercream was good but I definitely need to test this recipe of buttercream a bit more. There is something missing. Either way I can honestly say I was super impressed with myself. Changing a cake recipe which I know its full proof and extremely delicious, to something which I had no idea how it will turn out. In all honestly I genuinely thought the cake will flop in the middle BUT IT DIDN'T (HAPPY DANCE). Here is this tasty cake recipe which I adapted:
Chocolate Cake Recipe:
Preheat the oven to 180°C ( 350°F | Gas 4 )
Grease 25cm ( 10 inch ) cake tin
1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cocoa powder
- Mix the above ingredients together in a large bowl.
110 ml vegetable oil
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla or 1 tbsp coffee ( or 2 if you want it strong)
3 eggs
3 cardomon pods (crushed)
- Add the liquid ingredients to the flour mixture and beat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture is smooth.
- Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 30 - 40 minutes ( the time depends on if your living in high altitude), so at 30 minutes insert a skewer to the baked cake and if it should come out clean, take it out of the oven and let it completely cool on a wire rack. If not leave it in the oven for another ten minutes.
Rose Water Buttercream
100g of softened, Butter
150g of Icing Sugar
2 Tbsp of Rose Water
2 drops of Red Food Colouring
- Mix with an electric beater the butter, icing sugar, rose water and red food colouring. Beat until the mixture is thick in consistency. Place Rose buttercream on top of the cooled chocolate cake and add some slightly, crushed green pistachios on top (as a pop of colour).
There is it Nini's Twist on Never Fail Chocolate Cake Recipe, its so simple and really delicious. I can guarantee every bite of this cake is worth it and it lasts give or take a week ( longer if your not too much of a sweet tooth like myself, lol). If you make this cake with the buttercream I suggest to keep the cake in the fridge.
With changing the cake recipe, and it turning out so well it made me reevaluate my life. With the past events that happened this month, yes it was unfortunate and sad and I dwelled on it for so long but hey life goes on. I'm the same person but just happened to experience a few changes in my lifestyle which I can learn from and better myself. Who knew baking a cake could be so eye opening. I'm telling you these little thoughts in my head can be so strange but yet somehow quite important. I don't regret anything that has happened to me in the past few weeks, it happened for a reason and I have become hopefully wiser (after one incident) and stronger. There is nothing wrong with learning who you are, hey I'm 26 and I learned something new on Wednesday night, I can not eat as much as I did 6- 8 years ago... it's sad but hey thats life! Just push through it, think positive and good things will come your way. Which eventually did happen to me :) So I am leaving the end of February on a good note!
Thanks for reading, catch me what or where I'll be next month ( going to try and write a blog post every month....promise I am making to myself).
Eat, Smile and Be HAPPY
XOXO
P.S - If you try this cake, please let me know what you think! :)
