Black Magic Chocolate Cake

I've recently been craving chocolate fudge cake - you know the kind you get in practically every cafe, semi-gastro-pub and restaurant around the country? The super-rich, gooey, death-by-chocolate kind of cake? Yeah, that. Although the free-from deli near me does a pretty good range of cakes (plus their brownies are divine!) their chocolate cake just doesn't do it for me. I needed something absolutely sinful. 

So this is what I came up with - Chocolate-Espresso Fudge cake, with a hint of hazelnut, and topped with blackberries. 

It's very rich, sweet, sticky and with an almost brownie-like fudgy consistency, but surprisingly light in texture. I may yet do a bit of tweaking to the quantities, but this cake hit the spot and I'd definitely make it again. 

Tropical Coconut and Pineapple Cake

It's rather late in posting, but in a bid to keep summer alive as long as possible, I thought I might as well put up this recipe for the fruity concoction of a cake I made shortly after my first lot of exams.

In keeping with the Tropicana theme of my (kinda) recent summer party, I decided to use the remaining, unused pineapple (from the cheese-and-pineapple-on-sticks) as well as some coconut-flavoured liqueur and Midori to make a fruity, slightly boozy, tropical cake.

I was aiming for a Hummingbird-style cake, and combined elements from two recipes to work with the ingredients I had in the flat: This one and this one.

Rookie

OK, so I missed the whole of August - not a single blog post for over a month. Oops. You can tell I'm a rookie at this!

My only excuse is that life and law school caught up with me, and I had to prioritise the most critical things on my to-do list in order to get through it all. I suppose I could have made the time, but I would have felt guilty that I was frittering it away on an entirely frivolous subject, rather than working on something more productive. But I've passed the GDL (thank goodness!) so all the hard work was definitely worth it!

Now that September - and a new University term - has arrived, this blog could go one of 2 ways: either I manage to successfully work the blog into my schedule and revel in my newly structured way of life ... or I post more sporadically - when I've got a request for something specific or feel like I've got the time and energy on my days off... Who knows which road it will take?!

I think the most important thing from my perspective is that my baby blog remains something I actually enjoy doing in my free time (what little I have now!) and stays a source for my favourite 'foodspiration' and recipes I'm properly pleased with. That way, even if no-body else reads it, I can still look back at a record of all the lovely ideas, recipes and tit-bits that I thought were special enough to make the subject of a post. :)

A couple of 'arty' shots taken in August at Warkworth in Northumberland, just because. Wish I had a better camera! (and camera skills!)

Maia x