Outfit #73 - Five Fifteen

Outfit details:

Dress: Cue (op shop).  Shirt: Hot Options.  Shoes: Pulp.  Earrings: ? Sportsgirl I think?

Today, for the first time in years of Tuesday morning rehearsals, I did not wake up at 5:20.  Knowing how long it takes me now to water my new garden (9 minutes last time, with new seedlings planted yesterday), I set my first alarm for 5:15.  As Hawaii Five-O started again last night, I didn't get to sleep until about midnight, so I also had about 5 hours and 15 minutes of sleep.  With many students away (without notice), it felt like I only taught for 5 hours and 15 minutes, but this wasn't actually the case, thankfully.  I did manage to read a whole book, though, and I'm not a fast reader.

Ooh, and apologies for the photo.  Not sure what the spots are... Despite waking earlier, I didn't have any time for photos this morning, nearly had to run for the train, and then my after-school students arrived 14 minutes early and nearly caught me in the act.  And apologies, too, for the hair - still adjusting to the whole dealing-with-short-hair thing.

Today's photo:

Actually, a photo from yesterday.  Water droplets in the sunshine on the basil.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

I very nearly made a chocolate truffle cake for yesterday's birthday get-together.  But I made that last year, so I looked through a couple of cookbooks to see if anything else caught my eye.  (The truffle cake is amazing...).  In the Women's Weekly Chocolate Cakes book I found this recipe for a chocolate buttermilk cake, and the only ingredients I needed to buy were buttermilk and chocolate.  Plus, this is a layer cake - possibly my first ever.  I'm quite happy with the result.  I'm also looking forward to being able to run again so I can fit into my clothes again.

Recipe:
180g butter, chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups (330g) caster sugar
4 eggs, separated
3/4 cup (110g) self-raising flour
1/3 cup (35g) cocoa powder
3/4 cup (180mL) buttermilk
chocolate filling:
400g dark eating chocolate, melted
250g butter, melted
1/2 cup (85g) icing sugar mixture

Preheat oven to moderate.  Grease deep 20cm-round cake pan, line the base with baking paper.
Beat the butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy; beat in egg yolks, one at a time, until just combined.  Stir in sifted dry ingredients and buttermilk.
Beat egg whites in a clean small bowl until soft peaks form; fold into cake mix in 2 batches.  Pour cake mix into prepared pan.  Bake in oven about 1 hour; cool in pan.
Make chocolate filling by combining the chocolate and butter in a medium bowl; stir in the sifted icing sugar.  Cool filling to room temperature, and beat with a wooden spoon until thick and spreadable.

Split cake into 3 layers.  Reserve about 1 cup of chocolate filling.  Place one cake layer onto serving plate, spread thinly with some of remaining filling; repeat layering with remaining cake layers and filling.  Spread reserved filling all over cake.  Refrigerate 3 hours before serving.

I made the cake on Friday - which made for a super-stress-free Saturday.  It did feel a little dry on Saturday though, but today moist again.  Weird.  And my icing is far more set than the picture in the book.  The whole thing was really hard to slice (all that icing...) but all that icing also makes it quite rich.  It apparently serves 8-10, and there were 8 people present.  I knew one wouldn't be having any and another would only have a tiny bit, but there was still a lot of leftover cake.  The thing about buttermilk though, is that it only comes in 600mL cartons.  So I still have just over 400mL of buttermilk... and a recipe for blueberry pancakes...and one for orange syrup cake... this could be dangerous.  I'm trying to find slightly more forgiving outfits for this week!

Today's photo:

Like yesterday, I ate breakfast in the armchair by the courtyard.  The basil grows right next to that part of window, and the light was shining through the leaves.  I wasn't sure how it would turn out, with a whole lot of backlight, but the result I rather like, better than I thought it would look.