The Birthday Cake

My husband celebrated his birthday last week, it's a very good date as it never rains on his birthday, and dinner was in the garden and essentially consisted of the birthday cake I made for him and champagne. Very Marie Antoinettesy. Now I won't go into the trouble of writing out the recipe for you as it basically is a mix of my famous chocolate tarte and butter cream like I make it for the Buche de Noel, the recipes to both you can find in my cookbook, except I made a mocca butter cream instead of with griottines but then I decided to nevertheless add the griottines back as they look so awfully nice. Also taste nice. It's an old-fashioned cake, from back in the days when butter was measured out in pounds instead of grams, which is why it goes well for dinner.

I also made a magret de canard for him after, as we do this American thing called birthday week, it's fabulous really because you get to celebrate your birthday each day for seven days in a row, and I threw in some home made pasta, the one I make adding cognac to the dough so as not to put too much sugar into him. I also made an enormous bouquet of gladioli (read gladiators) and wild flowers for him because I generally think men do not get enough flowers, so I'm trying to make up for it.

Today is the last day of his birthday week and him being a modest soul at heart he wished for an Italian serata, which here means we go into town and eat pizza (there is in fact nice pizza in France thanks to a large community of Italian immigrants with good taste) and tiramisu.

Also still spots available in the upcoming retreats, one on 28/29 September, which is a classic autumn cooking one, and one on 12/13 October, which includes a professional shooting by Cassandra Jackson-Baker. More info here or inquire via hello@lespoissonchats.com. Looking forward to hearing from you!