Happy (Extremely Belated) St. Patrick's Day!

Here I am, 2 weeks late with another entry. I'm so bad at this. Although I'm 90% certain no one reads this anymore anyway, so I suppose it doesn't much matter.

Grumpiness aside...

Randy was in town last weekend, and it was St. Patrick's Day, so there were many festivities. Tim was corning a beef, and I was craving my mom's special cabbage recipe, a St. Patrick's Day staple in our house for years, so as part of our celebration, we decided to have an authentic Irish dinner. (Well, as authentic as we Americans can get, I suppose.) Tim prepared the corned beef and potatoes, Chris brought Irish variety beer, and we brought the cabbage, Irish soda bread (a baking adventure itself), and, of course, cake.

The cake was Sacher Torte, which is apparently the most famous chocolate cake in the world. Of course, I've never heard of it, so how famous can it really be? Then again, I don't - wait, didn't - like chocolate cake, so I'm probably not the chocolate cake expert, hence my ignorance. Anyway, the cake is two thin layers of dense bittersweet chocolate cake filled with apricot jam and covered in a dark chocolate glaze. The most traumatic part of the cake was trying to half the single thin chocolate cake (well, that and opening the rum to go in the apricot filling... I can't smell rum now without flashbacks to fruitcake...), but it was overall a cake that looked more impressive than the work that went into it. Randy was a fantastic photographer, conducting a rather intense photo shoot of the cake making process. Sadly, there's just not enough room for all the pictures.

Dinner was delicious... we really outdid ourselves in a fine showcase of our culinary talents. The book clearly states that whipped cream is an important part of Sacher Torte, so after plenty of Irish fare, we dolloped generous helpings of homemade whipped cream on top of our slices of cake, and enjoyed the excellent finale to our meal. Most of us had second helpings, leaving little room for the enjoyment of Irish beverages later in the night, but it was a worthy trade.

I'm honestly not usually a huge St. Patrick's Day fan. Too many people pretending to like Irish punk bands and getting sloppy drunk early in the morning for my taste. But this year may have changed my attitude a bit. Good friends, good food, good beer, time with my sweetie, and fabulous chocolate cake... sounds like a great holiday to me!