white chocolate cake with passionfruit curd and chocolate dipped strawberries

Hey, long time no blog. 2017 has been utterly rubbish so far, hasn't it? I was so determined to start the year positively, despite a gut feeling of impending doom, but it's just been one crap thing after another. My gut was correct. I'm fed up with the year and basically want to hide in a dark hole. It's difficult to write when you have zero enthusiasm and the longer you leave it the less inclined you feel to return.

I'm not sure what to do with this space. It has been offline for the past week as I contemplated shutting down. I'm undecided as I do like having a creative journal and have always enjoyed all the like-minded blogger interaction, however I really struggle with putting myself "out there". I continued documenting my bakes earlier in the year, indicating that I did intend to catch up, I'm still sewing and knitting, and I still love reading blogs although I haven't been able to bring myself to comment or interact. So... yeah, that's where I am at the moment.

Anyway, today I'm sharing a white chocolate and passionfruit cake I baked for my Mum's birthday back in February. You're here for the cake, right?

The cake is a Peggy Porschen recipe from her "Cake Parlour" book I've had bookmarked for a few years, although I baked it as an 8" two layer cake instead of a 6" three layer. I also filled it with homemade passionfruit curd instead of jam and topped it with white chocolate dipped strawberries. Whenever a family birthday approaches my Mum inevitably says, "remember that cake you made with the chocolate dipped strawberries?" (this one!) so I felt it was about time I made something similar for her birthday.

My sponges didn't rise particularly well - I don't know whether this was down to my mixing of the batter, changing cake tin sizes or just the effect of adding melted chocolate to a sponge batter - but the flavour made up for the denser than expected texture. The sponges very much tasted of white chocolate and the white chocolate icing was gloriously silky and moussy. Then the freshness of the passionfruit curd and strawberries cut through the chocolatey sweetness. All in all, pretty tasty.

It's not the most immaculately decorated cake, certainly a far cry from the beautiful examples in Peggy Porschen's book, but it has its own charm. This is when I'm reminded that I'd make a terrible professional baker. I really don't have the patience for all the careful levelling, crumb coating and chilling.

Perhaps now that I've written this post it'll get the ball rolling for others.

How has everyone else's year been? Please say somebody has been having a good year?!