Would you like some beetroot with that Chocolate Cake? or 'Little Lisa's Fruit Cake'

A few weeks ago I declared to Husband ‘I’m bored of eating’.  So on one of my google obsessed days I went in search of some new inspiration and clicked across a fabulous blogger – Jules Clancy. Her blog Stone Soup - http://thestonesoup.com/blog/ is so where I was at that I devoured the content like it was bible. Her mantra is 5 ingredients 10 minutes, along with an ideology of using what is on hand. Her result? Easy, healthy, tasty meals.  What is not to love?

As I am not one to keep new passions to myself, I have been sharing this recent evolution in my cooking journey freely.  So on Friday when I collected a fabulous friend for a morning in the park with small people, coffee and treats, I was excited to hear that my cross pollination of these ideas had motivated her to bake a chocolate, beetroot and cardamom cake purely because she had these things in the cupboard. 

 

The colour, the texture, the something, momentarily took me to a morning when I was no older than six.  Awake early, I crept past my mum who was sleeping her last minutes of sleep before a day with her girls.  This was a more difficult feat than one may imagine as her bed was in the corner of the lounge room which then led on to the kitchen of our one bedroom duplex. I tiptoed across the over sized black and white checked flooring, pulling a chair awkwardly to the cupboard to retrieve the ingredients I believed would make a good fruit cake.  I mixed it and poured it into a tin ready for my mum to wake up –I knew I mustn’t use the oven alone.  Mum masked her initial alarm at the carnage my production had created brilliantly. And what was emblazed in my memory is a glow from knowing she was proud of my culinary attempt. She even managed to smile her way through the eating of it. I have no memory of how it tasted but I am guessing I was no Junior Masterchef. 

Back to Friday's cake and the taste was delightful and the texture amazing an experience I want replicate in the near future.