Nigella's honey chocolate cake and blogversary

On the weekend this little blog of mine celebrated its first year.

I will not bore you with the usual blablabla about how much this amazing experience has helped me out of my comfort zone (in the kitchen, on my laptop and with my camera) and introduced me to a whole new community of friends and food lovers all over the world.

You've heard this, you've done this, you don't need to read about it again. B.O.R.I.N.G.

If I were Martha Stewart I could show you a blooper reel of the past year.
For example me crouched over on a chair in my undies and a t-shirt to get that perfect picture of a cookie. Forgetting the window is wide open behind me. It happenend.

Or me pulling the hand beater out of the bowl and forgetting to turn it off. I am still cleaning chocolate batter sprays off the walls.

There have been many such moments (and great moments too of course)

But I am not Martha Stewart and I am no Nigella Lawson either. The closest I can get is making one of her signature recipes and that is what I did to celebrate.

 

Before I get into baking technicalities, just one last thing.

I see from my stats that I have lots of silent readers and several followers. I was a reader of blogs for many years before I started commenting and interacting with bloggers and I know that doesn't make a person any less passionate or interested. I just wanted to acknowledge you, a year in, and tell you I know you are out there and how much I appreciate your presence. Thank you. If you ever feel like it, like dropping a line or asking me a question, I would love to hear from you.

Back to baking.

Making Nigella's chocolate honey bee cake was quite simple, but keep in mind there are a few steps and it is important you have enough time to let the cake and glaze cool before assembling.

Making the bees was a lot of fun. I made them with my daughter, who is five, and she really did a good job, so it can be a fun family activity.

As always occurs when I need a key ingredient, the only box of marzipan paste I found was damaged, so I had to resort to making my own. It was a revelation, it is that easy!

 

The only two problems I encountered where following:

1. Nigella suggests using a cup of boiling water for the batter. My batter was already quite runny with half a cup so I didn't use the whole amount. My springform pan is old and a bit battered and I have had problems with runny batter seeping out during baking in the past, so I didn't want to risk it. And it did seep out a bit anyway. I brought the cake to a party and it was finished before I had a chance to eat a slice. I did however steal a nibble from my daughter and did not find the cake as moist/gooey as I expected and Nigella described. I wonder if that made a difference? I only baked the cake for an hour, so I don't think it was overbaked.

2. Nigella also suggests covering the cake after 45 minutes if the top looks cooked, which I did. The cake was perfect when I covered it but it sunk in the middle a few minutes after covering, which was very disappointing. No biggie, as she suggests turning it over for the icing, but it was a little of a letdown.

Besides that, it was fun and easy to make and looked like a million bucks. So if you are not a "domestic goddess" and want to impress, this is the cake for you.

Yuletide and Nigella's butter cut-out biscuits

The Yuletide has hit our home in all of its German, American and Italian glory!

  

Over the week end out came the tree, decoration, lights, candles, the Advent calendar, the Tyrolean hand-carved wooden crib. Copious amounts of cookies were baked and decorated, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby's voices floated out of our speakers. Letters were written to Santa Claus and stuck in boots and left last night on our windowsill for Saint Nick to collect, leaving sweets in their place. The Twelve Days of Christmas was sung a cappella and youtube videos of NYCB Nutcracker were watched.

The Christmas season was always a big deal in my family growing up but one thing we never did was bake cookies. Decorating cookies with my kids was something I already imagined as a child and after buying conspicuous amounts of cookie decorations the last time we were in South Tyrol and a dozen Christmas cookie cutters at Villeroy and Boch last month I had no excuse.

Nigella's recipe (from How to Be a Domestic Goddess) is fool proof, all you need is time on your hands because there are various phases involved: preparing the dough, chilling it, rolling it out and cutting out the shapes, baking, cooling and decorating. However, if you decide you are not in a decorating mood, these are great plain too!