The Green Cake

Ok so I promised you I'd tell you about the green cake incident. I had been dating J for about a year and during this time he had been constantly raving about his Mums cooking. His parents had come over from the UK for a visit and I was going to cook for them. I was a little bit nervous and had spent a lot of time thinking of the perfect meal I could make for them. I thought it would be lovely to make a pavlova. Light, delicious and most importantly the national dessert of Australia (or is that New Zealand). How difficult could a pavlova be??? I'd done a few test runs before they came over to visit and everything worked out fine. So it's the big day and did I have everything prepared well in advance - oh no. Was I rushing around like a mad lunatic to make the dessert just hours before they arrive - oh yes. So I've a million things on my mind and I'm chattering away to J, as usual, when I reach into the cupboard to get the vanilla essence out. I'm mildly distracted as I reach for that little glass bottle and pour a few drops in but my attention screams to a halt when I look in horror at the drop of green food colouring I have just poured into my meringue mixture. For the love of God, how am I going to fix this? J very helpfully suggests that since it is March I could pretend it was a St Paddy's day Pavlova. So off I sprint to the local shop to get more eggs and sugar to try again. I'm now in a mad panic and in my deranged state try to take a few shortcuts. Again what could possible go wrong??? Well the meringue could turn out like one massive flat solid biscuit. I think this was caused by madly mixing everything together without a thought of a gentle fold. So after attempt number two we are now mere minutes away from the parents arrival. At this stage I even considered smothering my large biscuit thing with so much cream and fruit that no one will notice the disaster but even J admits this is not going to work very well.

It's at this stage that the panic reaches such a heightened state that it crashes back to normality. There is nothing for it but to calm down and start all over AGAIN. One final trip to the local shop for eggs and sugar (the shopkeeper must have thought I was making one massive cake). I decided to go for a new approach - it was the pretend-you-like-cooking-while-your-guests-are-there approach. To be honest, I really don't like cooking after guests have arrived. I much prefer to have everything as close to prepared as possible so I can sit down and immediately start into the wine without fear of forgetting something. But in this case the approach worked a treat. I was calm and managed to produce a very normal (white) pavlova that was enjoyed by The Parents. Phew!!!

Five years on and The Parents have enjoyed many a meal at our place. In memory of that green cake incident I decided to make a green cake or a lime cheesecake to be more specific. Even this little beauty was not without its incident. I made up the lime jelly and I meant to leave it in the fridge for about an hour to partially set but once again that problem with a short attention span and an easily distracted mind got in the way. I thought I would just read a few posts from a new blog that I discovered. But it was addictive and 3 HOURS later I remembered the feckin' jelly, which at this stage was well and truly set. All I can say is thank God for my little corner store cos off I went and bought another jelly. Second time round all was well. I really have to be a little more focused when I'm cooking, it would ave me a fortuen in multiple purchases of ingredients.

This zesty lime cheese cake was yet another recipe brought to me by J's Mum and can be found here