The best vegan cake, ever.

Er, it was. Is. I do LOVE the flavor of this cake but it was pretty crumbly. Fluffy and light but perhaps I should have baked it in a deeper dish.







There are two main reasons I like vegan cakes...


You can let your Little Berry lick the spoon without the slightest concern for raw eggs.



And, even though
we're pretty much out of groceries, I had all the ingredients for this, except the vinegar. I simply left it out, though *if* I'd had pickles I probably would have used a tsp of picklejuice and just left out the salt. Here's the recipe with my modifications:

Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup organic sugar
1/4 cup honey (you can use a whole cup of sugar and leave the honey out or do more honey and less sugar)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup warm water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil
mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine water, oil, vanilla and honey. Whisk with a fork until combined. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, mix thoroughly. Ask your toddler to stop sticking her hand in your batter. Attempt to distract toddler with batter covered spoon and spend ten minutes trying to take her photo.
Pour into lightly oiled, floured baking dish, no idea how big it should be, bake on 350 for 20-30minutes.

I think if you have a good icing recipe mastered, icing (or glaze) would really help hold this cake together. Otherwise, just enjoy it. Toss in some chocolate chips to the batter or top with raspberries and ...oh my. That would be so yummy!

Here's the link to the original recipe:http://www.instructables.com/id/The-BEST-chococlate-cake-ever...that-happens-to-be/step1/Ingredients/

A box of words

I'm giving up on fixing
My computer anytime reasonably soon. Pappa Starbucks has been working more than usual thus week because two weeks off for Christmas wasn't enough for the kindergarten of the girl he nannies, they had extra days this week too. I actually can understand why. Most people had busy holidays and children get shuffled from here to there and back again. Add In all the excitement, the being cooped up, the new toys and the sugary foods..Christmas should be a month long, not just a day. So let's recap, shall we? Our holidaze were calm, although we had colds.


I finally tried my hand at candying orange peels in an attempt to use the whole thing. It was super easy. Unfortunately, I made another batch with organic sugar and they were really not very pretty.


I made this dear little dolly....


And I made some amazing Ginger syrup which we consumed like nobodys business with a litre of seltzer water and some ice...


It was so. So. Good!


Little berry had a lollipop for the first time since our trip to Europe-


She thought it was grand


Washed it down with some broccoli (which she loves just as much as the lollipop I do believe)


And a trip to the pet store to follow people around and try to play with their puppies. And make bird faces at this pretty yellow parrot.




And this- this is a box of loveletters. I pulled them out the other day and as often happens I am surprised at all the things I see. They were exchanged between pappa starbucks and I before we were pappa starbucks and mamma pie. Before there was a little berry. Sometimes it's nice to remember those days of self centeredness, of believing in something purely because it was yours and made you happy.


Mementos of a time spent trying to express oneself through words on paper, of trying to condense a feeling into a letter. It parallels childhood: pure, selfish adoration and total beleif in something without the need for logic or reason. It's amazing to look at these, and I'm sure they will be treasured for years, though we didn't create them with an intention to preserve the paper, but to assuage the heart.

Hope your holidays
Were bright.
Happy new year!