An Easter Cake

So clearly my mother is the prolific blogger of the family, despite my best intentions. In the two months of this blog, she has clearly dominated with news of Laranja and Catembe. For those of you following the "getting the cats to the boarding house" story - my mother reports from Madrid that getting them into the carrier was much easier this time - no chasing the cats all over the house.

Last weekend, Tiger and I celebrated the easter holiday by dining with our surrogate family here in Washington, the Nicolaysens. Our small contribution to the delicious meal was a flourless chocolate "Easter Egg Nest Cake" from Nigella Lawson (found here for NY Times Select subscribers). After being cooked - the cake collapses in the middle, creating the effect of a birds nest when you put candy eggs there. Since my mother originally made the cake, she asked that I post pictures of the entire process, so here they are.

First, we gathered the ingredients, as seen above. Key to those ingredients was of course Tiger's blackberry seen on the counter there. Since both of us had failed to print out the recipe at work - we were left to read the recipe off the blackberry. And lest some of you fear for our heart health - we realized soon after this picture was taken that recipe only calls for one stick of butter. Phew - crisis averted.

After a few hours of mixing, baking and melting chocolate we wound up with the beautiful end product. Here's a picture of the cake itself and below are John and Julie Nicolaysen enjoying a piece after dinner.

In other exciting news, Tiger and I will soon be off to the Mile High City. Following her appointment as a senior executive with the Democratic Convention in Denver, we'll be moving out there late this summer. I have yet to figure out exactly what I'll be doing while she whips up all sorts of excitement at the Pepsi Center, but we're both very excited about the new city and lots of skiing.