Lisa's birthday cake

One of the reasons I decided to start a blog was that I enjoyed reading blogs by other MIT students. And one of the things they blog about is what they're eating, including posting photos (Yan at mitadmissions.org is famous for such blog posts). So, when making a cake, I thought I'd do the same.

I decided to make this cake while reading the Sun Herald, which I was doing because I was enjoying a quiet Sunday in Yass. The cake was chocolate, cherry and almond. Knowing that Lisa particularly enjoys Black Forest cake, I decided it was an appropriate choice for her birthday the next week.

The cake was scarily rich: it contained chocolate, butter, sour cream, ricotta cheese, 10 (!) eggs (note: that exclamation mark was for emphasis, not suggesting that I used 3628800 eggs - by the way, correct me if I have 10 factorial wrong: I don't have a calculator on hand)... no flour: just 150 g almond meal to bind it. It was rather difficult to mix it all together, but eventually I got it reasonably homogeneous. After quite some time in the oven, it came out ok.

And the taste (this is probably the first time in my life I've started two sentences in the same text with 'And': I guess it's part of my developing 'blog style')? I actually wasn't a huge fan. I once ate burnt chocolate, from the time Jacqui overcooked it while melting it in the microwave, and I found it tasted quite similar. Its exceeding richness meant I struggled to finish a normal-sized piece. Others seemed to like it, though, so I was glad I took it across.

By special request, this is a short post. News of parties will continue (unless my temporary computer misbehaves even more than it has to date).