this week on ellen bakes cakes...

My first excuse to rummage in my nightmare of a baking cupboard this week was for Valentine's Day afters. I'd had several ideas for what I'd like to make for pudding all involving calories, chocolate and copious leftovers but settled on dear Nigel's Chocolate Almond cake from The Kitchen Diaries which just happened to be the most 'substantial' of all. Oops. And oh my, down such a wickedly decadent path to ruination it led! It's one of those high-chocolate / low-flour cakes made with five eggs, whisked whites and more butter than is polite to mention. Still a little wobbly in the middle (aren't all the most interesting folks?) and slightly warm from the oven, with a dollop of creme fraiche and a more-slushy-than-expected-western on the side: I was made up baby. Made up!


Even better, I got to off-load some of the calories on my co-workers and took the rest round to Emily's house for band practice (that's where I took the above photo). You can see more of Emily's lovely Japanese-style quilted place-mat on her beautiful new daily-Blipfoto-blog: Floating Weeds. 

My next visit to the cupboard of doom was to knock-up something to take round to another friends house for tea. I'd planned on making Nigella's Cranberry & White Chocolate Cookies in the festive season. I'd thought they maybe sounded a bit too Christmassy in January but as I had fruit, the pecans and just enough porridge oats (which were just fine but then I dunno what 'instant' looks like...) I went ahead. And they were good; sweet but on the right side of sickly. I think the dark sugar dissipated some of the sugar hit and also did something kinda funny with the pecans to convince me there was some maple syrup in there! See Nigella Chistmas is not just for eh, Christmas!!


 I just hope they gulped-down as satisfactorily for Cookie Monster...