Today is the 30th birthday of my beautiful and talented friend Clara.
She came to stay last weekend, I made her a cake, because you can't have a birthday without cake, it's the law.
A Nigella Lawson recipe, her Birthday custard sponge cake.
I love Nigella, I preferred her in her Vogue days, rather than the parody she has become, but nobody pulls off a Vivienne Westwood dress quite like her, and she has nice hair and good use of eyeliner. Although Claudia Winkleman is my all time hair/ good use of eyeliner heroine.
I just wish, somebody in her home economics team checked her recipes. There is invariably a step missing, the quantities are way out, or an oven temperature is wrong.
This doesn't matter in the slightest for most things, I rarely stick to a recipe anyway, rather like with the Satnav, I always think I know best. The arrogance.
With this recipe it is the chocolate topping, it makes enough for 26 cakes.
The cake was good, suitably kitsch, but add a drop of vanilla extract to the sponge mix, and halve the topping amounts, and let it cool before applying it to the cake, and ignore the bit at the beginning of the recipe that says add ALL the ingredients, she means all the sponge ingredients.
Serve with a dark and stormy.
also Chaukah candles make great birthday candles.
also tomorrow i am making many corsages, buttonholes and hair garlands for prom. Yes prom, for those former SHS girls incredulous that there is a prom, i know. It's the U5th, did we have a ball then? do i remember something about kissing boys in the quad?
All the boys are loving this image.
6 comments:
now
for me Nigella is two things...
great kitchen gadgets
and great boobs
t x
now this is so funny - i made exactly the same cake for frieda's birthday two months ago and it was seriously the worst cake i've ever made.
it came out like a bloody rock bun...and usually cakes are my speciality subject. i couldn't understand what had gone wrong and put it down to pregnancy? i thought i'd lost my baking mojo.
now i know the truth. nigella has sold us all up the river with this one.
I am incapable of anything other than Delia's ultimate carrot cake, but it works a treat every time. I do take issue with her quantities from time to time though, esp the amount of condensed milk in the energy bars.
Nigella is notorious for having non-working recipes. I suggest Mary Berry. Every single recipe that I have ever tried, or anyone I know has tried, has been super perfect. Her Victoria sponge is a dream and very easy to make.
There was certainly never any prom. We had a leaver's ball in the U6th and I can remember a few school discos in the hall indeed accessorized by snogging in the quad around U5th. I love Nigella's attitude to food but I agree, my recipe books are filled with adjustments to her measurements.
I appreciate Nigella's late night snacking and cleavage but I too often thought it was me failing at following her instructions.
Also, no. Never a prom. What has happened? Should we write a strongly worded petition?
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