birthday excess (or lack of)

I love birthdays. Cake, presents, cards, a party, a special dinner. When I was growing up, the birthday girl (or boy – my dad) was woken up by the rest of the family, all bearing gifts and singing happy birthday in crackly morning voices. There would be a cake, usually chocolate – my mother had a recipe called Diana’s Chocolate Cake that we all loved. If it was weekend, there would be a party on the day. I had a sleepover once; another time my sister had a fancy, three-course sit-down dinner; and for my seventeenth birthday a very memorable surprise birthday party was successfully pulled off.

But on weekday birthdays, there was dinner. We could pick whatever we wanted for our birthday dinner, something that rounded off a day of other treats perfectly. My sister tended to choose lasagna, or sometimes moussaka, and these were good choices; my mother’s lasagnas and moussakas are delicious. My own birthday dinners are mostly very hazy, other than the year I asked, of all things, for stuffed roast goose. I had been re-reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and in one of them, she and her sister crave a roast goose. So now I wanted one, even though we lived in Moscow where, at the time, the most basic of groceries could sometimes be elusive. But on the table that evening was a goose, roasted and stuffed with dried fruit, bread and herbs. It strikes me now that my mother might be a magician.

In any case, this is all to say – birthdays are a big deal to me. Andrew, on the other hand? His feeling about birthdays could probably be summed up as – eh. I have trouble understanding this, while Andrew has trouble understanding my birthday obsession.

So, we humor one another. For my birthday this year, Andrew took me on a day trip to wine- and olive-farm country, tasting and buying wines, olives, and olive products, wandering through the beautiful near-by town and eventually eating the most delicious late lunch at a pretty, fresh local restaurant (there were roasted marrow bones. I love roasted marrow bones. It was too hot for marrow bones, really, but I ordered them anyway and loved them).

For Andrew’s birthday a few weeks ago, I bought a present, wrapped it, and baked a cake. And that was it. Any other gentle hints and suggestions for possible plans were equally gently rebuffed – Andrew didn’t want any fuss. I swear it took nearly superhuman powers to restrain myself and allow it to be such a minimalist’s birthday, but that’s what he wanted so that’s what he got.

I may, however, have allowed myself to indulge with this cake.

Chocolate Hazelnut Birthday Cake

Andrew loves chocolate. He especially loves it with hazelnuts. So I combined those in this cake, a vanilla sponge with hazelnut chocolate grated into it, covered with a chocolate-hazelnut icing. I let out all my pent-up birthday zeal on the poor cake when I absolutely covered it in hazelnuts, which you probably don’t want to do, so in the recipe I have halved the amount of hazelnuts I used.

For the cake:
1 cup cake flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 extra large eggs, separated
½ cup oil
½ cup warm water
200g dark chocolate with hazelnuts, grated (I used milk chocolate, because it’s what Andrew likes)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the icing:
½ cup butter
2/3 cup cocoa
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 cups icing sugar, sifted
¼ cup boiling water
½ jar Nutella
100g whole hazelnuts

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease two 20 cm cake tins and line them with greaseproof paper.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the egg yolks, oil and water to the well and mix well. Tip in the grated chocolate and stir it into the batter, then stir in the vanilla. Whip the egg whites separately until they form soft peaks, and then stir a third of the egg whites into the batter. Then, finally, fold the remaining egg white into the batter gently, trying to retain as much off the air as possible.

Divide the batter between the two cake tins and bake the cakes for 30 to 45 minutes – if you press lightly on top of the cakes, they should spring back.

While the cakes are baking, you can make the icing. Melt the butter in a small pot and add the cocoa, stirring it quickly on the heat for about thirty seconds. Remove the cocoa mixture from the heat and let it come to room temperature. Stir in the vanilla and then start sifting in the icing sugar one cup at a time, with a tablespoonful or so of boiling water to mix in each cup of icing sugar. When you’ve added all the icing sugar, stir in the Nutella until it’s well combined and smooth.

Let the cakes cool completely before you ice them – there will be enough icing for a generous layer between the cakes as well as all over the whole cake. Chop the hazelnuts roughly and press the nuts all over the cake.

easter riddles

I would like to be one of those people whose favourite holiday is Easter. Easter is linked to so many beautiful traditions and rituals the world over. And now that Andrew and I are starting our life together, I wanted to start us off on our own Easter traditions.

But I don’t know what to do about Easter. There are no traditions from my childhood that really stand out, other than my mother’s progressive Easter egg hunts. The hunts started with a rhyming riddle to lead you to the first egg and the next riddle, going on like that until you ended up with the final, big Easter bunny. My mother’s rhyming couplets were always impressive, complicated things, making the hunts difficult and exciting.

Easter Sunday morning, still not having any very good ideas for special Emma-and-Andrew-Easter-traditions, I decided I might as well start off with a hunt, ala my mother. But as it turns out, I’m no good at getting riddles to rhyme. Not even that good at riddles themselves, either. To illustrate: “I’ll keep you warm when you cuddle on the couch.” We have a couch blankie. Of course Andrew got that within seconds. A few others were better, but only slightly. It was all over within minutes.

So that was the Easter egg hunt, and I was stumped as to what else to do to make Easter special, and ours. At a loss, I resorted to food, as usual. Nothing original – lamb is what everyone has for Easter around here. But it was special, because it was our first Easter together and, as it happens, our first leg of lamb together.

Now when the next big holiday comes along, I’ll see if I can do better to make it special. But really, roast leg of lamb did pretty well for us.

roast lamb for two, for easter

1 half-leg of lamb, bone-in, about 1kg

4 tablespoons olive oil

handful of thyme, picked and finely chopped*

handful of rosemary, picked and finely chopped*

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into chunks

2 small onions, quartered

1 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup red wine (I used pinotage)

sprig of rosemary

sprig of thyme

splash of port

First preheat your oven to 160 C. Take one tablespoon of the olive oil and rub it all over the fatty, "outside" bits of the leg of lamb - not the cut sides. Now mix the herbs, salt and pepper together and pat the mixture onto the fatty parts of the lamb. Put the leg of lamb in a roasting tray, with enough space around it for the sweet potatoes and onions. Toss the vegetables in the remaining olive oil and some more salt and pepper, toss them into the roasting tray around the lamb, and slide it all into the oven.

Now you wait; how long you wait depends on how pink you like your lamb. We like ours pretty pink, so it came out of the oven after 50 minutes. An hour and a half in the oven would give you well-done lamb, an hour and ten minutes, medium. Once you've roasted as ong as you like, take the lamb out and arrange it on a platter along with the vegetables.

Now you can make your sauce, while you let the meat rest. Put the roasting tray on a hot burner and add the stock, wine, sprig of rosemary and sprig of thyme. Let it all heat and bubble up, while you stir and scrape and loosen all the yummy caramelized lamb juices stuck to the bottom of the pan. When it has all cooked down and thickened a bit, splash in some port and cook for another minute or so. Take the pan off the burner, fish out the herbs, taste and season. You'll need quite a bit of salt, some pepper, and you might need some sugar. If it seems thin or watery, cook it down some more, but keep in mind that this is supposed to be a thinnish sauce, not a thickened gravy.

*You could also use oregano and marjoram, or any combination of rosemary, thyme, oregano and morjoram.