'T was a cold and wintery Women's Day

It all started with Women’s Day, or as I experienced, the day of no remote recognition. The boyfriend came home to a delicious belated Meat Free Monday (MFM) dinner of Mediterranean roast veg with couscous, feta, a mixture of seeds, and a balsamic and olive oil dressing. In my attempt to prove that a secret desire to be a 1950’s housewife does NOT make you anti-feminist, dependent, ignorant or unmotivated, I tackled Women’s Day with gusto. To prove that I am the amazing, multi-talented woman of my dreams, I cleaned, I laundered, I vacuumed, I worked, I wrote, I studied, and I prepared what I thought was a healthy, nutricious, and delicious meal.

The MFM dinner was actually the request of the boyfriend, who had very hilariously teased me about my lack of commitment to my MFMs (let’s not point out that he is yet to cook me a dinner in the past month). So I prepared what I thought would tick the boy boxes of filling, tasty, healthy, and not too adventurous or exotic. He arrives home while I am preparing the couscous and then proceeds to chastise my use of chicken stock. Now I do not take well to criticism, ESPECIALLY when I have spent the day being super woman, AND deciding on a meal to cook takes about an hour of logistical planning of kitchen utensils, AND you don’t even remember that it’s Women’s Day. Out of the several hours of planning and effort from the day, the fact that I forgot that we don’t have vegetable stock is hardly the end of the world. But this little detail, not my freshly blow-dried hair, or the nice smelling kitchen, or the beautifully tidied bedroom, or my intelligent banter, this detail is what he notices.

So, because as a woman I can do anything and do it freaking well, I was not going to let this one slide. The following morning I asked what he would like for dinner that night and he jokingly replied “Chocolate!” For those of you who don’t know James, ensure that you hide away any chocolate you have if you are ever to meet him. Like an aged coke addict, he can put back kilograms of the stuff and barely notice a difference. He recently revealed to me that the most amazing thing he had ever heard of was ‘death by chocolate’, but that sadly it did not live up to its reputation.  My mission: revenge by chocolate.

Bearing in mind that this kitchen is definitely not equipped for baking, I went off to the shops to find the easiest, just-add-eggs kind of dessert. I managed with some success to find my arsenal of weapons. What I set out to produce was a chocolate brownie cake (taken out the oven just before it’s actually cooked, as the boy so dearly loves), with white chocolate chips, smothered in chocolate fudge icing, with chocolate ganache sauce, double thick cream, and dark hot chocolate on the side. When I gave the dreadlocked housemate the pots and bowls to lick out, he declared that “It’s like my birthday!”...  He hadn’t seen the finished product... 


It’s not pretty, it's not technically skillful, but it is impressive:

Now this is by no means my finest creation, considering that most of it came from a box. But I definitely succeeded in my chocolate mission, and I perfected my chocolate ganache! And by a happy accident, I have discovered the yummiest way to make hot chocolate; perfect for waking up to a cold winter’s morning as all my loved ones back home are, this Silken Hot Chocolate can be as decadent or subtle as you like!

My only failure? I was certain that one slice of this cake with all its extras would be more than suffice for James, but again his chocolate dedication has left me in awe: the entire cake gone, plate licked clean, the ganache polished off, and the silken hot chocolate cup left dry.

*Disclaimer* I can not be held accountable for any heart-attacks, weight gain, or any illness caused by attempts to recreate this. It is NOT for the faint-hearted!!