Sour Cream Chocolate Cake & Icing

I am dead keen to make a fabulous chocolate cake or choccie cup-cakes. I've been perusing Martha's recipes, and the ones on the Waitrose site, as well as my modest collection of cookery books, and decided to try Nigella's Sour Cream Chocolate Cake because it sounded smooth and very chocolatey. Oh dear me... it's turned out to be a far-too-sweet chocolate affair. It has good chocolatey colour and a lovely fine crumb (smooth texture), but overall it's not chocolatey enough for me. Or rather, it's not as 'dark chocolate' as I'd hoped for. The recipe for the icing produced something that's lovely and smooth and light, but far too sweet. I just feel like it needs to be dark and bitter, rather than light, chocolate, whippy.
Another thing is that my decorating technique is horribly OLD FASHIONED. I don't think it works at all. So, overall, there's heaps of room for improvement.

I think I'm going to pension this cake off (to the grateful & hungry souls at Keith's office), and make the box of brownies Heath sent me for my birthday. It's one of those – just add oil, an egg and hot water – jobs. It looks painless, and might be more satisfying in the chocolate arena. Let's wait and see.

Victoria Sponge

Annie & Clare came for supper on Tuesday night, and I felt inspired. I chose the Victoria Sponge recipe from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book, and went ahead and made it. The actual cake came out really nicely - well risen, golden colour and good texture. I suppose a part of me had expected it to be lighter, but there you go. I covered the cake in raspberry jam (home made by a B&B we stayed in near Tonbridge Wells). Annie sliced up the strawberries so that the assembly was a work-of-art, and we dolloped cream on top of that before adding the second layer. It was superb.

Scones

I felt like scones at lunchtime today, so whipped out Mary Berry's recipe book and put some together. The results were lovely and light, but also quite flat. The problem is that I take the instruction - roll 1 cm thin - far too literally. I think it'll be MUCH better if I keep them quite a bit thicker and double up on quantities next time. That way, they'll puff up more. Still - quite delicious with raspberry jam and cream.

Confession Time

I belong to a pretty good line of kitchen-persons, my great-grandmother arrived in Cape Town and worked as a cook in the late 1800's, before becoming a policeman's wife and bearing 3 children. I would say that her reputation in the kitchen has LONG survived her, and many people have told me how talented she was. My grand-mother turned her hand to many things, including a magnificent trifle and near-legendary boiled lamb & caper sauce. My mother's cooking won my husband's heart and his allegiance for life....

And as they say, that's where it all began.