Chocolate Cake-mom’s recipe

Would you like to get the recipe for a Chocolate cake that inspires you to write and get creative? Well, this is not just any chocolate cake, it’s my mom’s recipe and with a twist of alcohol for the grown-ups. 🙂 When, I am feeling lost and need to slow down, this Chocolate cake comes to my rescue.

I have just started a blog and figuring out the technical logistics has been driving me mad and up late at night. Watching you tube video’s, reading up on information, it’s an endless library of resources out there, as I am anything but tech savvy, it takes me longer to understand the mysteries of plug-ins and coding. And not just in the night, but it’s consuming my entire day, let me just say, I have become obsessed! My eyes hurt, my head hurts and sometimes I just want to give up. But then….

Nature inspires and so does Chocolate cake 🙂

My husband, Matthew has put up a few bird feeders out on our balcony. He carried eight kilo of bird food home to feed the Robins and Blue Tits hanging around in the vicinity. And, trust me these tiny birds eat relentlessly. That’s all they do, eat! It’s been quite amusing to watch them actually, as their tiny  bodies try to hold on to the metal bars of the feeder, stuffing their tiny  beaks with as much as they possibly can. They fight and bully each other, the biggest bully is the baby bird, we call it the ‘the little ball of fur’, often successfully she manages to shoo the others away.  With time the birds have become more communal and sharing.

Anyways, before he bought the proper bird feeders, Matthew had tied balls of bird food in a net to the branches, but a big Magpie would always find a way to fly away with it, leaving little to no food for the others. So this time, Matthew placed the food strategically, in a way where only the little birds could reach it. When the Magpie returned, perplexed about the change, and unable to reach the food, it kept jumping from branch to branch, tugging at the net, for a good couple of hours. It just wouldn’t give up as somehow it had to figure out a way to eat. Poor thing! Exhausted it finally gave up and flew away, but returned a few hours later to give it another shot, also without success. The next morning the bag had been ripped open and the food was gone! The Magpie had finally managed to figure it out through persistence and patience!

Time to slow down and eat cake

I felt exactly like the Magpie, trying to figure out the technicalities of blogging, and I don’t feel like I have won yet. But, like the Magpie I have decided to give it a break and focus on the soul of this blog, my writing and doing the things I know and love. So, I decided to take a step back, slow down and go the old-fashioned way. A hot brew and a slice of some homemade Chocolate Cake that I had baked a few days ago, made so much sense! ooh, such mouthfuls of joy, as I watch the clouds settle on the mountains. So much beauty at my doorstep, it’s definitely my muse to find my lost inspiration. I am sure I will eventually win like the Magpie, not overnight, but I will find a way to design my site as I aspire.

These days everything is about technology, social media. Sometimes, I miss the good ol days of the typewriters or just writing in a diary, the feel and smell of paper, I still love going through my mother’s old recipe books, so many stories untold and hidden behind that writing. Of course, the benefits of social media are convenient and endless and the makes the world smaller and more accessible. Technology might keep changing, but what doesn’t change is an old recipe or the art of baking and eating it. And most of all a Mother’s love and her cooking. My mother is my biggest inspiration in the kitchen and eating this cake with a cup of tea, washes away all my worries and I come back to life.

Chocolate Cake

This chocolate cake is my mother’s recipe and though I have so many more recipes for chocolate cake, I often come back to this old classic. As a child, I would greedily wait for my mother to finish whipping the batter as I would love licking the leftovers from the bowl, that tradition continues till date. Though I have a kitchen aid mixer, I use muscle strength as a reminder of the charms of the past and to keep the memories alive. 🙂

Besides this Chocolate Cake, I also highly recommend Mary Berry’s Chocolate cake, which I often make. http://www.maryberry.co.uk/recipes/baking/chocolate-obsession

If you are not into Chocolate then, check out my other easy to make dessert http://nomadskitchenstories.com/apple-rhubarb-crumble/