A Million Words

I haven't gotten around to doing anything in the past few weeks. Ever since Thanksgiving, it's been one unfocused, vaguely hectic day after another. Nova has been struggling along with her teeth. She has horrible decay in her front top teeth because of my tooth-cleaning negligence combined with night nursing, and her bottom back molars were coming in. Nova had her 2nd birthday, and I made two cakes for two separate celebrations of the occasion. The first, a Chocolate Brownie Torte with White Chocolate Mousse and Caramelized Bananas was a bit of a flop, but tasted good. Nova enjoyed blowing out the candles and eating it. The second cake was equally mediocre, but held together better. It was a basic chocolate cake with orange frosting and chocolate-frosting decorations. I tried to decorate it with the traditional pastry bag and tips. Nova ate the bits of chocolate off the top. Obviously her diet is not as tooth-friendly as a dentist would wish for, either. We have been doing ...

When Mike was working full-time at a miserable, hazardous job, I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate every Friday by buying or making a cake.  So far, I've made chocolate cakes, carrot cakes, and miscellaneous cakes.  By the time we went into unemployment a few months ago, I had become quite attached to the idea of the Friday Cake. Last week, I decided that it would be fun to try to make a Battenburg Cake.  I'd spotted one at a friend's house, and thought it was interesting. After all, we don't have Battenburg cakes in America.  A week later, and on Saturday, I've finally gotten around to it.  The process was messy.  I used this recipe except that I bought the marzipan rather than make it from scratch.  The batter was gloppy and had to be thinned with lots of milk, and I didn't get it quite even in the pan. The cake came out all lumped up in the middle and didn't look like it would make two neat checkerboard cakes in a million years.   Well, a ful...