Fourth aniversary on this blog - an English fruit cake and self praise

So, this last Sunday we had a bloversary here and I totes forgot about it. But this blog has been going for four years already. Might not seem like a lot to some, to me it's a wonder I keep at it, seeing that lately writing and self publishing have been taking so much of my time and most of my passion. But the truth is I love food, I love to eat, I delight in cooking and in setting the scene for a photoshoot here, so I go along with it. Provides me with another creative outlet that is significantly different from writing novels, although I try to tell a story in both cases. I try to tell a story of food, here, sometimes I feel like I fail completely. It's still a learning curve, like writing is, like self publishing and all the marketing and promotion. All the non stop, exhausting self promotion.

It's actually something I believe blogging and writing have in common, the need for self promotion. Whether I'm wearing my blogger cap or my novelist one, I have to put myself and my work out there, or else how are others gonna know? But I always feel so self conscious about this, as if I am a fraud trying to play int the big league with no right. I always feel like I'm on the other side of the "You can't sit with us" line, know what I mean? So self promotion becomes a bit of a chore, a bit of a shame. Because deep down I'm constantly thinking 'who the hell do you think you are to praise your work and push it to others?'. But in all honesty, my work's not bad. Ok, so this blog has come down from hundreds of daily visits to about ten pageviews a week, so my novels don't sell and I have been refused reviews on account the books don't deserve more than a two, three star review, and that's pushing it, so I am not being very sucessful in any of my creative and professional endeavours.

But I believe in what I do. I believe in the quality of my work. Some days the photos will be ugh, or meh, others they will look amazing. Somedays I will write nearly 6000 words of which I have to cut two or three, the writing being just so good; others I will struggle to get 500 on paper and all of those will suck. But in the end, and despite the thematics constantly being the same, both for my pics and my stories - the dark mood, the broodiness, the thing with the occult and the witches and all the magic and the vampires - I do believe I tell a very good story in both cases. Like this cake, here. There's a story in there, and I do feel it's a good one, I do feel the photos do it justice. It's a story of colour and texture and hunger, a story of glutony and desire.

I mean, I look at that cake and I want to eat it. Those little crumbs on the side, I want to pick them with the point of my finger and lick them off. I want to relish on that slice, all the fruits and the moistness making my mouth water. It's a story of a cake so good, it can stand on its own, no need for props to embelish it. It's also a story of a cake baked in the deep of Winter, when light is hazy and cold and drapes a blueish tinge over everything, when days are short and nights are long, and roaring fires warm the body and the soul, when cakes are made to last long, and yet end up half eaten hours after they have come out of the oven. It's a story of how one day, someone sat down at her laptop and decided to take a plunge, take the risk, and embark on a new journey, forge herself a new adventure. It's a story of resilience, of self motivation, self love. It's the story of this blog, yes, and also of who I am, of the talents I never knew I hid inside me, of the will I never believed I could have, of how I am my first and foremost admirer and of how I can suffice myself to keep going.

For all that, congratulations are in order, and the cake is just what I would want to celebrate myself and this blog, these four years of learning, working hard, pushing forward, believing in myself and not letting the echoes of whatever goes about shake the foundations of who and what I am. Because we never truly know others just from what we are allowed to see through their social personas, and we never truly know what goes on, deep down. This cake is for all those who have so many undercurrents the world around you chooses to ignore, pinning you to an image they chose and of which they refuse to unmould you from. You're more than what others make of you. You're you. Happy anniversary to this blog, and may I find the will to keep it up for my sake alone.

• 100 gr candied fruits
• 50 gr raisins
• 100 gr walnuts
• 100 gr apricots 
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp cinamon
• 1 thumb fresh ginger, grated
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 8 tbsp butter
• 1 1/4 cup dark muscovado sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tblsp orange zest
• 1 tblsp lemon zest
• juice of an orange

Seep the fruits in one cup dark rum for at least half an hour. Turn on the oven at 190º and line a loaf tin with baking parchement and set aside. On a bowl, cream the butter and sugar - use a stand up mixer for this, please - and start adding the eggs one by one, alternating with the flour+ baking powder. Add the lemon and orange zest, the spices and the orange juice, mix well. Finally, pour in the walnuts and fruits, with the rum they have been seeping on and blend well into the dough, use a wooden spoon now. Pour into the tin and bake in the oven for one hour or until your skewer comes out nice and clean. I do advise you enjoy this over a piping hot cup of VERY milky tead, though!!