Chocolate cake

There's a lot to like about chocolate cake. In fact, there's not a lot not to like, if you'll forgive the clumsy sentence. But everyone probably has a favourite bit. And mine is the icing in the middle. This is the way chocolate cake has been iced by every baker in my family: plain/vanilla icing in the middle, chocolate on top and sides. I think it's the unexpectedness of the crisp white vanilla icing in the middle that makes it special - though obviously it's not unexpected to me.

Today, as you might have guessed, was partly spent icing a chocolate cake. But it began with a sudden and very sleepy awakening. I'd left my shutters open and woke with that tired "oh the sun has woken me too early" feeling. Only it turned out to be 10.20am... Ah well, that's what happens when you're up all night.

To rewind a little, nothing too fun - took the kids along to the end of the road to watch the fireworks display - rather lovely but it turns out balancing a camera on top of a wobbly letter box for long exposure shots of fireworks on a very windy night is not the best. So we all got to bed after 11, then just as I was drifting off (having read too much of the Scottish history book that had just got to an exciting bit) there was a crash. Of course it was exactly the sound an axe-murderer would make if breaking through our back door, so I patrolled the house for the next hour or so with various weapons, before finally getting to sleep at about 4. (It turned out it was actually the sound of the transformer for our kitchen light fitting falling off the wall for no obvious reason.)

Anyway, once brought back to life this morning by strong hot tea with just the right amount of milk, we headed to the market, shopped well, and then home to cook the biggest pan of bolognese sauce I've ever made, and a few trays of shortbread. And to ice a cake. And entertain hordes of local children who descended, ate all the biscuits and drank all the juice, then kept Conor out past his dinner time. But Mr B's back, full of gossip and tales from London so really there's no excuse for me to be wittering on like this.

Time for cake.