sometimes life just is not fair

I know what you’re thinking from the title, but before you turn your eyes away, let me say that this post is completely free from doom and gloom . Undoubtedly some things haven’t exactly gone the way that they could have, but I can’t see the point in bemoaning the course of life. There is, however, a lot of fun to be had from laughing at its eccentricities and something has just surfaced in the past few days which give me far too much smug glee for me not to share.

On Monday I visited the dentist for the first time in years. It felt like time for a checkup and more pressingly a while back I had a little bit of pain when I ate ice-cream and after a quick tooth inspection I found that I had a little black dot which looked an awful lot like a bit of enamel decay. The obvious explanation was that a diet consisting in a large part of chocolate and porridge with dulce de leche had finally taken its toll and so I was fearing the worst, but it turns out I was wrong! Admittedly I do have a bit of a problem with sensitive gums caused by the bit of metal left in from some old othodontics (and hence the ice cream pain) and some sort of little black stain, but apart from that my teeth are healthy, really quite unreasonably healthy. If having chocolate for breakfast on most days and caramel on the others isn’t a surefire way to tooth decay then I don’t know what is.

There is also a second part to my smug glee. I don’t have a set of bathroom scales in my flat and so I haven’t had a chance to weigh myself in ages and ages, I suppose I have been home, but I haven’t been into my parents’ bathroom (where the scales are) in ages and ages so I haven’t thought of it. On Tuesday though I did think of it and it turns out, as if it weren’t already bad enough that I’d avoided one of the dangers of a diet mostly based on candy, that I’ve also lost weight. Apparently all the chocolate I could want throughout the year and a huge amount of holiday eating adds up to a slightly lighter me.

Maybe people hate me a little for it, but I think it’s hilarious.

Anyway, this little self centred tidbit is also my return to regular blogging. Now that I’ve stopped doing the market I would still like to stay vaguely visible for anyone who would like to follow and also not doing the market means that what I do do with chocolate won’t be a repetitive grind and could actually make for interesting reading again. There’s the mail order club coming up and there’s certainly something else in the works that could well be the greatest chocolate thing ever. I’ve been spending far too much time on howstuffworks in preparation for it. Be prepared.

oh i’ve missed you so much!

So, since I’ve moved the coffee machine’s been playing up: making sour coffee, steaming milk like an asthmatic puffin, not doing my damn laundry or the dusting! Oh… wait, got to remember that it’s not the maid… just the sweet sweet source of all coffee joy.

I finally got around to taking in to get it serviced last week and turns out everything was fine. Just a little bit of backed up milk and a couple of screws that had worked themselves loose and that was it! I picked it up this morning and now it’s back where it belongs. I haven’t had a chance to check the coffee makingness since I didn’t think it would be fixed up so soon and my order of delicious Kenyan/Zambian goodness hasn’t arrived in the post yet, but it is steaming like a tiny god again. I’ve had like four cups of just steamed milk this evening and just that is so so so good.

<3<3<3<3

Being up in Swiss Cottage anyway meant that I also just had to pop in at Natural Natural and although I did manage to not spend £80 on bottled sauces and rice like I did last time, there was no way I could escape the special offer going to expire bread.

I LOVE Japanese bread, it’s like halfway between brioche and the super dodgy packaged supermarket white bread. It’s super fluffy, it’s super sweet, it’s super soft and they slice it super huge. In fact, it’s just super, that’s it! Apparently it’s more or less the same as Pullman bread… so I might have to give that a try just to see if it’s true… but I doubt it. I’m ok at breadmaking, but there’s no way I could make a bread that super. *sigh* Interestingly enough the bread I bought today was what they would call Ingirisu-Pan (English Bread) in Japan, if only it were true.

Anyway, since I did have it and I had to eat it all today I started munching as soon as I got home and I’ve only just finished up the last of it now. Amazing is one way of describing how I’m feeling right now, bloated or nauseated would be others.

Mmmmmmm…. bread and condensed milk….

Mmmm…. apocalypticly large sandwich filled with watercress and chicken and surigoma and mirin and soy sauce and rice vinegar and far too much kewpie mayonnaise. Somebody didn’t want theirs and so I’ve been forced to have two of them.

N.B. I don’t have strangely small plates/cutting boards. This bread just dwarfs EVERYTHING.

Hmmm… this post has lots of photos in it. The last one looks as though it belongs in a McDonalds menu and I’m trying to decide whether that’s a terrible thing or not.

the sweet (sour (sauer?)) taste of success

Yay, another market day successfully completed yesterday with only a mild amount of stress and only a little disruption to my highly busy schedule of growing a butt shaped indentation in my sofa and playing far too much M.U.G.E.N. (I’ve been feeling exceptionally geeky since the post about TCHO and I had to let it out somehow).

The stall pretty much sold out of everything by 4 o’clockish thanks to loads of friends turning up again to help take the stuff off my hands and to help out selling the stuff too! It could be that some people would probably frown upon my business if they knew that all my employees were only being paid in chocolate… but they seemed to turn a blind eye for umpa-loompas so maybe I just haven’t found the clause in the International Labour Laws that says something like

“Oh, unless they’re being paid with choclate. Then you can do whatever you want, it’s all good.”

All the sour chocolatey things seemed to go down really well at the market. The umeboshi chocolates were especially popular with a pair of Japanese tourists who turned up fairly early on in the day and the very first group ever from Chocolate Ecstasy Tours came round to the stall and quite liked them too. Just to make the day even better, a guy who writes the guide to London markets came round at exactly the same time so it made me look really popular. Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Actually, now that I think about it, the chocolate tour was probably the best part of the day! I’ve never had such a crowd of people all around the stall who were super keen on trying/buying/obsessing about chocolate… it’s just a shame that in all the excitement I completely forgot to give them the cake….

The Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake

I thought for this that I’d just go and steal someone else’s recipe and point you to that… but none of the ones I could find online seemed to be as chocolatey as I like to have my cake so I just used one that’s pretty close to my normal chocolate cake, but with a whole load of sauerkraut added in and less moisture and salt to make up for it. It might get a change at some point when I try making it again, but it tasted pretty good so it probably won’t change much. I’ll be giving the other recipes out there a try just to see if I was wrong and if really is better as a more spongey and less fudgey cake. Oh and hopefully there’ll be a picture of the cake to go here too as soon as I can steal one from Alice.

(picture stolen! thankyou Alice ^_^)

150g unsalted butter

250g caster sugar

2 large eggs

100g cocoa powder

a pinch of baking soda

200g self raising flour

100g of sauerkraut (drained weight)

First off set your oven to 180 degrees C and grease up a baking tin (I think I used a 2lb loaf tin for mine) and then warm up the butter in the microwave until it’s soft (I don’t have a microwave and I used my hands… yay for health and safety!).

Rinse and drain the sauerkraut to take a little of the edge off the flavour then chop it coarsely and leave it on the side while you do the rest of the mixing up to see if any more water comes out.

Cream the butter with the sugar until it’s nice and fluffy and then beat in the eggs. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl and then beat them in a little at a time into the wet mix. Finally, mix in the sauerkraut and pour it into the baking tin.

Bake for 50 minutes and then test it by sticking a skewer in the top. If it comes out clean, then it’s done; if it’s kind of gloopy then put the cake in again until it does come out clean. You might find that the top starts to get a little hard whilst the cake is cooking and if you start feeling worried about it then just pop some silver foil over the top and everything will be fine.

Once it’s cooled down just grab a spoon and eat it straight from the tin… or if you’re feeling adventurous then a bit pop a piece on a plate and add a (un)healthy dollop of creme fraiche and a weensy bit of mustard!