Hey my loves. I keep seeing all these posts about how January has gone on forever….I feel like the only one that disagrees!! I feel like it’s flown by….but not because I’ve been busy. I’ve been in hibernation mode and literally cannot be f****d doing anything!!! I just want to sleep all day, and wake up when the weather is warm. And I LOVE the snow….I just feel like we’re expected to be so productive in winter while the rest of nature fattens up and takes it easy….I like the sound of that way more…am I right?! anyway…Aubergine.
Eggplant in North America….Brinjal in South Africa and India. Whatever you want to call it. It’s my least favourite vegetable in the world. It’s vile. It’s the only veg that I literally will gag on 🤢 that sounds sooooo gross especially because of what the emoji is meant to represent, but for real!! The texture is so weird!! It’s so soft and spongy, and then the skin is so tough. My face while typing this has my nose wrinkled up. I just can’t wrap my head around it. And I’ve tried! I’ve had it loads of different ways and every time I see them on display at the grocery I want to pick one up and take it home because they’re just so beautiful….but no. I just won’t. Because it will end up in the bin. So here I go on a tangent again. Who knew Aubergine could make one spurt so much nonsense?! Eeeeww…mind in the gutter..again 🙄🙈
Soooooo my incredible boss Craig is quite the character. When he first offered me an interview I knew I’d love him before I even got the job. And if I didn’t get the job, I would’ve asked him to work for me. He’s just so funny and we get on like a house on fire. After the interview I almost gave him a hug because I felt like we’d known each other for years. We already have shared far too much about ourselves having only known each other for 5 months.
One of the first shifts that I worked with him, he told me about an aubergine shaped platter that he saw at Tesco and he just thought it was hilarious. He brought it home and his partner just didn’t share his enthusiasm. I was in stitches….so a few weeks go by and I have a training course in Glasgow. I go to a little gift shop while waiting for my train home and I spot this glittery pen….with a bouncing little aubergine sitting on top of fluffy purple feathers! I immediately picked it up and said ‘Craig HAS to have this!’
When I gave it to him we were both howling with laughter. He keeps it at work and uses it ALL the time. It’s a surprisingly good writing pen. Fast forward to Christmas and Craig gets me as his Secret Santa. And I knew straight away that it was from him because he got me….an Aubergine CHRISTMAS Ornament!! I was in tears from laughing. So of course it just made sense that for his birthday he was going to get an aubergine cake.
Craig is lactose intolerant so I made sure to make the cake vegan. Which I love, as I’ve just recently started on the vegan path. I used dairy free Ghiradelli dark chocolate to make the ganache and it was quite dark so I had to add some icing sugar to cut the bitterness. And the cake! You’ll see in the video how crumbly it looks but it’s so moist, and when combined with the ganache…you’d never know. Our co worker Fergus was not happy to admit that it didn’t ‘taste vegan’…whatever that means 🤪 The recipe I used for the cake can be found here. Please try it. It’s gorgeous 🥰 and the time lapse video for creating the Aubergine Cake is just below!
Hope you guys like it!
Sending love and light 💕