When I was younger we would go into the woods with school quite often. There were so many activities that would take place in the woods. We would pick berries and mushrooms, go on small adventures and collect pine cones and pretty leaves. But then I grew up and became a busy gal. And since I was in school I haven't been to any woods until recently when I took these photos. The child in me came out again, and I wandered around joyfully. I realised that I really missed being around nature, smelling the scent of the trees and wet ground beneath me. There will definitely be more occasions on which I invite the child in me to go have an adventure in the woods again.
This Saturday there will be a short break from the Cancer Series, and instead there will be a celebration post!
I hit 10,000 views on my blog yesterday!!
To properly celebrate these fantastic news I made the most chocolatey and delicious cake (you'll find the recipe lower in this post) and stuffed my face with it!
I want to thank everyone who reads this blog! Thank you for taking the time and reading what I have to say, it means the world to me! In just 6 months this blog has become a place that I am proud of and so happy I have created. I have established friendships through this blog with lovely people all around the world, and I am so happy and grateful for that. The people who interact with me through this blog, and comment and talk to me - you are all golden! And so is the person who reads the blog silently, I'm so happy you've decided to stay a while in my space and heed my words.
A big Thank You to all of you out there!!
Now, on to the recipe...
This cake is a little experiment. The sponge is one of the best recipes I've ever tried for a chocolatey sponge, and it is from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. The sponge is the one used for the Brooklyn Blackout Cake, and it is meltingly perfect in the mouth.
I added a trusty ganache between the layers and on top of the cake, and sprinkled some chocolate sugar strands on top. And it really turned out into a lovely rich and decadent cake.
Luxurious Chocolate Cake
Sponge
Recipe adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf
INGREDIENTS
100 grams butter, room temperature
260 grams sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
45 grams cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
170 grams flour
160 ml milk
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 170°C.
Mix the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time mixing well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda. Lastly add half the flour, all the milk and then the last half of flour.
Pour the batter into three 20 cm tins and bake for about 25 minutes.
Let cool to room temperature before you continue.
Chocolate Ganache
INGREDIENTS
200 grams chocolate, chopped
2 dl heavy cream
1 tablespoon butter
DIRECTIONS
Heat the heavy cream and butter until just before a boil. Remove from heat and pour over the chopped chocolate, mix until combined.
ASSEMBLY
Place one of the layers on your serving plate. Spread 1/4 of the ganache on the layer, then place the next layer of cake and continue with spreading another 1/4 of the ganache on it. Continue until all three layers are in place. On top of the whole cake pour the remaining 1/4 of the chocolate ganache and let it pour down the sides of the cake.
Decorate with chocolate sugar strands if you wish.
This doughnut dress is one of my favourite dresses of all time (most probably because it's got embroidered doughnuts on it! Doughnuts!). I first saw this dress on my Instagram/blogger bestie, the intelligent, lovely and stylish lady, Liana of Finding Femme. Liana's blog is one of my big blog-inspirations, her posts are elegant and eloquent, and her style is always beautiful. When Liana wore this dress she styled it impeccably with a beautiful belt and scarf, and fantastic heels. As we are going towards colder weather here in Sweden, I styled it with a pair of thick tights and warm cardigan (that I didn't wear for the pictures, because the dress looked better without). We are already reaching temperatures below zero during night and early mornings. So tights were an essential.
I've proclaimed my love for doughnuts on the blog before. As I said then, good doughnuts are hard to come by in northern Sweden. We don't have the immensely famous Krispy Kreme or Dunkin' Donuts, so from time to time I embark on the adventure of whipping up my own doughnuts.
So far I have only ever tried making "Cake Doughnuts" and if I am to be honest I didn't know that there were different types of doughnuts until quite recently. With the info I've gathered Cake doughnuts are more old-fashioned and are raised by baking powder rather than yeast and therefore have a more "cakey" texture. All I know is that they are delicious and easy enough to make.
The recipe I use can be found here from Joy of Baking. I've mentioned Joy of Baking earlier and I cannot rave about it enough, what a brilliant place it is! I often use recipes from Joy of Baking so don't be surprised if you see it again on the blog.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg in a bowl.
In another bowl, beat eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla. Alternately add the flour, milk and melted butter. The batter will be soft but cover it with plastic film and let it sit at room temperature for half an hour.
When the batter is firm enough to roll out, do so on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin to about the thickness of half a centimetre. Cut out with doughnut cutter or cookie cutters. I used two cookie cutters, one 8 cm one and another 2 cm one for the doughnut hole. Heat up oil in a fryer to 190 degrees C. I used canola oil, but you can use any oil you prefer. Carefully place two doughnuts at a time in the fryer and fry each side for about 60 seconds or until golden brown. Remove doughnuts from fryer and let sit on paper towel until cooled.
The doughnut is ready for icing, sugar or ganache. Or you can eat them as they are, they're delicious as they are without anything on too.
Homemade doughnuts are really great, and they are fantastic straight out of the fryer. So delicious when they're still a bit warm. I love to fry the doughnut holes on their own and roll them in cinnamon-sugar and eat them before I eat the actual doughnuts, but don't tell anyone...
This week is the international OCD awareness week, and as it is a special occasion I've decided to write a little bit about my own OCD. This is difficult for me to be open about, but I feel like it is something that I will do at some point, so why not now?
Before I start with my own experience with OCD I want to clear things up by defining what OCD is.
OCD stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and is a debilitating mental disorder and anxiety disorder. It starts with obsessions, better described as intrusive thoughts. That is, thoughts that you don't want to have, usually something that makes you highly uncomfortable. These are thoughts that persist even when you try to ignore or confront them. On an intellectual level you know that the obsession is not corresponding with reality. The obsession causes great anxiety.
Some people only have the intrusive thoughts and might have no or mental compulsions. This is called Primarily Obsessional OCD, or Pure-O. Others with OCD will perform compulsions. Whether the compulsion is mental or not, it is performed because it decreases the anxiety that is brought on by the obsession. Sometimes an OCD sufferer will have to perform a compulsion just because it "feels right". The feeling is that the compulsive action will either relieve the obsession, or it feels necessary to act on it to avoid the dreaded intrusive thoughts.
Even though sufferers usually know that the compulsions are not necessary or exaggerated they will perform them as a sort of escape from the obsession, but the relief is only temporary. Compulsions are very different from habits that are done because you want to. Compulsions are performed because you feel like you have to. Habits bring efficiency to life, while compulsions disrupt life. Which leads us to the next characteristic of OCD. Which is that sufferers spend hours performing the compulsions every day. It's not a one time thing, but it interferes with life.
So now that we know what OCD is lets talk about what OCD is not.
OCD is not a quirk, or a trait. It does not have anything to do with being neat, organised or clean. It is not a superpower (as suggested by the tv-series Monk). Using OCD or any other mental disorder as a nickname for things that people do, think or say will minimise the disorder and increase stigma. It is done a lot, especially for OCD. My favourite tv-show Doctor Who has on multiple occasions joked about and trivialised OCD. But I think it is only because people do not really understand what the disorder is. My mission is to talk about OCD now, once and for all. Talk about how disruptive and debilitating it can be. So that maybe next time you hear someone say they are "so OCD" about something you can educate them.
My own OCD started almost seven years ago. It started very mildly with me being concerned about being "clean enough". I started avoiding shaking hands and touching door handles. Five years down the line my OCD had gotten to the point where everything was contaminated in my mind, I could no longer touch or be touched by anybody. I couldn't hug my own mother. The fear of germs and contamination made life difficult to the point where I was always scared when being around people, which is almost all the time. I would spend several hours of each day cleaning myself and my surroundings only to do it again the next day. When I was at my worst I washed my hands between 90-100 times a day. It was not very strange then that my hands had transformed, becoming red, inflamed and cracked. I bled from my hands about once a day. The picture that I accidentally took underneath this text shows my hands when they were really bad, but not their worst. It is not edited in any way and it even looks less horrible in the picture compared to reality.
I'm not showing a picture of my destroyed hands for you to feel sorry for me. I just wanted to show you that a mental illness can become something that affects your physical health. However the physical signs of the illness is nothing compared to what is going on inside of you. The fear and uncertainty is so real, and so extreme that it occupies all of your thoughts. And with that depression often follows. Depression is often seen in people with OCD and the writer of an OCD workbook described it like this: "Indeed, having OCD can be very depressive". Which as a sufferer of both, I can only say is true. My own OCD made me not be able to leave the flat eventually. I was housebound and completely unhappy, so my depression worsened and I became bedbound because I could not find any reason to get out of bed when it was a constant of cleaning and washing that was waiting for me. When I was at my worst I was suicidal, because I felt trapped in my mind and in my compulsions. The OCD affected and controlled all parts of my life. I had rituals for everything. I had to eat a certain way, wash a certain way, sleep a certain way, walk a certain way, just being was dictated by my illness. My life consisted of fear, anxiety, dark thoughts and my compulsions. It really was no life worth living at all...
I am very happy to be able to write that I am better now. I take two different types of medications against my OCD and depression and have started therapy successfully. I want all of you to know that you can hit rock bottom and then go even further down like I did and yet find a way back. I'm not cured, I still struggle with my OCD every minute of every day, but I have methods of coping, and I feel more free. That's why it is so important to talk about mental health, mental illness, suicidal thoughts, treatments and help. Because there is help out there!
If you want to know more about OCD I suggest that you check out the International OCD foundation: IOCDF
Another great place to quickly learn more about OCD is: That's OCD
This video by Hank Green and Crash Course also does a great job of describing the disorder and anxiety:
I hope you now understand what OCD is, and what it is not. I hope I have an ally in you in the fight against the stigma that is associated with mental illness. And I hope that you will carry on educating people and raising awareness about mental health and OCD.
