MY DAUGHTER’S CHOCOLATE CAKE

When she was younger, my daughter was already good at making chocolate cakes of the kind that kids were taught to bake at school - back in the days when cooking and such manual activities had not been erased from the curriculum. Budget cuts, they call it.

Gone, along with the school kitchens and the teaching of home economics ; and how I enjoyed working with the teachers of that subject !

The cakes my daughter concocted were of the simple kind, as the teacher knew that simplicity might instill in their students the desire to keep baking.

There was one in particular that my daughter had learnt to make, and it was just delicious. She was the only one to make it in the family, though my mum did occasionally steal the recipe !

We loved it and gave it little chance to go stale in the fridge.

Then she forgot all about it, and so did we.

And then, she stopped preparing anything tasty for a long while, and stopped cooking algother. She neither wished to cook, nor to bake, nor to share anything pleasant, for that matter.

And then, ever so slowly, she regained her strength, her energy, her lovely smile and her taste and lust for life.

That is how, by a beautiful, warm summer evening and by candlelight, she placed a pure marvel of a spicy chocolat cake, a perfectly beautiful and deliciously sweet treat in front of us. It was just perfect, unrivalled, and was gone in no time – our whole party were seduced, and moved by the gift.

So, one more time, I shall say thank you – thank you for the sweet present, so much richer in feelings than in the amount of butter, sucre, eggs and flour that went in it. I shall thank the talented pastry cook, and of course, thank whoever invented chocolate in the first place!

You want the recipe? Well, I guess you’ll have to switch to French for a minute, and click here, and never mind the advertising. But if you are really interested, I’ll translate it for you – with a warning : you’ll have to share it with someone you love to fully appreciate its taste.