Itadakimasu, yo

I know I’m at risk of trending utterly to cakes, and I don’t mean to do that. There’s so much to say about Scottish salmon, black rice, coconut milk, rack of lamb, rapini, sushi, chili for multitudes and lentils with sausage, not to mention the other things we talk about when we talk about food. But having alluded the Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame (CCHOF), I feel obliged to explain. It is, firstly, the title of a chapter in Nigella Lawson’s Feast. When I ventured into her CCHOF, I was simply trying to find a cake recipe that would get me through a birthday without shame, and I did–hallelujah!–with the Chocolate Guinness Cake, which I made for Bill’s birthday. And so on through the calories. Nigella saved me from chronic cake failure, and she did this by being amusing, irreverent and so much fun to read that I was beguiled into following her directions rather than using them, as is my custom, as mere suggestions. How can I not worship someone who says “This cake is magnificent in its damp blackness,” or “Having gone through a Biedermeier period earlier on in my life, I have something of a weakness for bees”? I would read her cookbooks just for the sheer pleasure of the written word if she were not also so compelling that I. Must. Make. Cake. Here are a few early inductees:

Chocolate Guinness Cake

Notice that the cream cheese frosting sits as-if-fluffily atop the black cake, mirroring the foamy head on a glass of stout.

I can’t say that you can absolutely taste the stout in it, but there is certainly a resonant, ferrous tang which I happen to love.

Chocolate Espresso Cake with Caffe Latte Cream

I made this for Bill’s birthday because Nigella says that it “exults” in the blend of coffee and chocolate, as do we.

Honey Chocolate Cake

Beautiful, perfect, Napoleonic–though perhaps in a slightly Disneyfied way.

The cake in this picture was my first honey cake. With each successive cake–and since they are a particular favorite of my dear friend Steve, I make one for his birthday and then again for whatever he wishes to celebrate, and there’s always something to celebrate, is there not?–I have made more and more bees. You can get dozens out of a can of marzipan (blended with yellow food coloring and decorated with little chocolatey stripes and almond sliver wings), and prop the excess on anything handy, such as a pile of Julie’s lemon squares.

Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake

I love to dot the top with sugar pansies–and you must admit they do look enchanting–but there really is no need to make a shopping expedition out of it. Anything, or indeed nothing, will do.

Thus liberated, I used real pansies from our garden. The cake needed a splotch of ice cream.

Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake

I have to admit that Nigella led me astray here, although I should have known. She says to line the loaf pan with plastic wrap–two layers, no less, and she wants it overhanging. “Don’t panic, it won’t melt,” she insists. But of course it did. Any fool would know that plastic wrap is going to melt in a 325 degree oven.

Chocolate Mousse Cake

For some reason people are put off by the words water bath, but if you think about it, it isn’t so very hard to wrap a cake pan in foil, plonk in in a roasting pan, and then, when the cake mixture’s in, pour hot water into that pan.

Fortunately, she was reliable on these instructions. Just last week, though, in making individual creme caramels, I used up my eight little blue ramekins from TJ Maxx and had to employ a few shallow dishes that did not have sufficient stature for the water bath. To make matters worse, at the suggestion of the those obsessive folk at Cook’s Illustrated, I cushioned the containers–12 little custard-filled darlings bathing in a roasting pan–on a towel that happened to be purple, so when the shallow dishes took on a bit of water, the water they took on was purple. Nothing that can’t be cured by another trip to TJs.

Rococoa Cake

The picture doesn’t do justice to this one. I suppose I will have to make another, just to get a decent photo. That’s more than enough impetus, for though I spent a full day on this one–the cake, the rum-espresso syrup, the creamy filling, the frosting, the (yes!) pistachios–the result was so fine and fancy it elevated the entire dinner, which was very nice already, to a loftier plane. Next time I will specify evening wear.