For the first time in a long time, I have topics, at least, planned for about the next month. It’s a comforting sort of feeling, knowing what to write about each week. I may even begin drafts ahead of time again. Get myself properly organised.

Only, this week, I was supposed to be writing about Delia’s Grated Chocolate and Almond Cake, which I made recently. But, after a week of yet more illness (it seems to have been one cold after another since the beginning of February), and yet more damp weather, I can’t summon the energy to find the story of the cake.

It has been a week for simplicities, for fairy cakes and chocolate icing, and huddling on the sofa under blankets with mugs of tea and books and films. For not really doing much.

Don’t get me wrong, the Grated Chocolate and Almond Cake wasn’t exactly difficult, though I found myself having to grind a handful of almonds (cheaper than buying an excess of ground almonds for the few I needed), and deciding chopped chocolate was safer for my fingers than grating (in future, posh chocolate flakes, or crumbled Flakes, will be used). But it isn’t the joy of this week. To be honest, I think its joy has passed.

But it was a joy, very delicious; several weeks ago now. I replaced the chocolate icing with marzipan, even the layer in the middle, which I put in before it had cooled completely so it softened and squidged to the cake. Like a Simnel cake, but without baking the marzipan in it. Delia wanted it done as a single cake and then sliced in half, but I went with two layer-tins, halved the baking time, and saved myself the trouble of trying to evenly slice it in two. It seemed to work quite well, even though my tins were ever so slightly smaller than Delia said to use. I figured it was better to use the slightly too small tins to the slightly too big one. And then I melted the remainder of the chocolate to drizzle over the marzipan layer.

And it went down a treat with the birthday-girl, who had requested an almond (marzipan) birthday cake. It’s a cake I shall probably make again. I might even make it per Delia’s instructions for icing, too.

I feel it could have had more marzipan, though. You always need more marzipan.