Baking a Cake

Taima and I baked this delicious cake I found in my favorite cookbook by Joanne Harris. The recipe is called Gateau Lawrence and is on page 124 of this book. It has ground almonds and bittersweet chocolate. Two of my favorite ingredients. We used 4 eggs from our chickens that we raise here on the farm. I love fresh eggs. The yolks are dark and rich. The taste beats any organic egg in the store. The cake turned out to be deliciously rich. It doesn't look exactly as the photos in the book, but that is fine. It tastes wonderful.

Joanne Harris also happens to be one of my favorite authors. She is half French half British. She wrote Chocolat which was made into the movie starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Great film if you have not seen it. She has quite a few books and I have read them all but one. I loved Gentleman and Players and Five Quarters of the Orange. Both novels have twists and turns that you leave astonished as you turn the last pages. Most of her writing includes amazing descriptions of food. This is a passage from Five Quarters of the Orange "From them I learned to be mother again, cooking pancakes and thick herb-and-apple-sauges. I made jam for them from figs and green tomatoes and sour cherries and quinces. I let them play with the little brown mischievous goats and feed them crusts and pieces of carrot. We fed the hens, stroked the soft noses of the ponies, collected sorrel for the rabbits." The entire novel is woven with wonderful references to food and recipes. It is beautiful. Don't read it though when you are hungry.