Update

I know there is an ongoing debate about how often it is appropriate to blog, but I have just realised one good reason for being disciplined and writing often - I totally forgot an entire baking session, producing two cakes for friends.

First up, Nigel Slater's awesome chocolate brownies, the ones he ran a few years ago to coincide with Glastonbury. Such an amazing recipe but one I don't make too often simply because these brownies are impossible to resist, even for me with my savoury tooth.

Karmically this is not a good recipe for me. Those who love me would surely argue, but I can be just the teensiest bit competitive so, for instance, if I were going to a gathering where each of us was tasked with preparing some food, I'd bake these. Guaranteed praise and applause, which I am shallow enough to love. Though on a more positive note, there is also something so deeply satisfying about baking something that people truly love to eat. It makes me feel all warm inside. Which is, of course, still making it all about me. But then it's my blog so nyah nyah nyah. And is karmically even a word? Not according to dictionary.com which has helpfully suggested 'karmic ally' as an alternative. Now I'd love a karmic ally. Hell, who wouldn't?

But I digress.

Butterscotch cake. That was the other one. I hadn't tried the recipe before so wheeled out the brownies as my sure-fire back up in case it wasn't spectacular (on this occasion not just for the applause but also because I really love these people and wanted them to have good cake). The cake was a bit of a disappointment but my expectations may have been unrealistic. Butterscotch is such a lovely taste but I would even have been pleased with a brown sugar feel. This however was just a sweet sponge. It was a pretty brown colour, admittedly, and tasted perfectly fine, but it just wasn't special.

Mind you, I really blew it with the icing. These friends arrived on a Friday night and had only been able to confirm that they were coming that day, so this baking was taking place in the context of dashing home from work to hoover the house, clean the bathroom and check the spare room was clean and tidy. This meant that the butterscotch cake was still warm when they arrived, so I wandered out to ice it about an hour after that.

The icing in question was basically a dlight variation on a fudge recipe, but removed from the heat at an earlier stage than usual with the mix still a thick paste. Sadly I was pretty toasted by this stage in the game (did I mention that these people are drinkers?) and was also chatting throughout the cooking process. To cut a short story shorter, I overcooked the icing and made - yes - fudge. This was particularly ironic given that in the run-up to Christmas I tried making fudge several times to see if I could do it well enough to make a gift of it, but did not feel that I could. Oh how I laughed.

So, not for the first time, thank the lord for Nigel Slater. Oh, and for good friends and white wine. In fact, looking back, the surprise isn't that I forgot to blog about these cakes last time around, but rather that I remembered that I'd baked them at all.