It's chocolate cake Saturday here by the sea. The morning was spent wandering around the local farmer's market - sourcing free range meat (trickier than I thought), eating Rita's samosas - the best in the district with the queue 10 deep, and checking out the range of macarons, finally choosing triple chocolate. Doggie's nose was on fire with the delectable treats on display - the stall holders guarding their goodies protectively.
The farmers market is always a social event, I never expect to just walk through without a chat.
After discussing farming methods with a local producer of pork and lamb, I walked away feeling somewhat disheartened at the difficulty in obtaining not only good quality meat products, but sustainable, environmentally friendly and cruelty free. Easier to be vegetarian, but I do like meat, so it's a difficult choice. I will keep on researching. My aim is to find local meat producers, that do not consider their animals as 'waste' products at any stage of their lives and are free to range all of the time. We as consumers are so brainwashed it's scary. Ignorance truly is bliss.
Ok, back to chocolate. My 11 year old son stated earlier in the week that he wanted to make a chocolate cake with chocolate icing today. He wants to give some to his teacher at school and eat the rest, of course. Finding a basic chocolate cake recipe amongst my array of cookbooks and magazines was harder than I thought. Most of them involved extra ingredients and methods - I wanted him to start with an easy one that he could do totally on his own. Baking is such a science and for a 'word' person like myself, I am not brilliant at science. But I am a very ordered kind of person, so baking is perfect - exact measurements and times (well, generally). I helped with the measuring and little things that make baking easier - softening the butter for 10 seconds in the microwave for example. You've no idea how many years it took me to realise this! The amount of times I creamed sugar and butter straight out of the fridge!
P.S They did remember the cake! We ate half of it when my dear friend Maria and her lovely Irish fella popped in - with pink champagne of course! No time to ice it, straight down the hatch. Now, for that second slice with chocolate icing....
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