15/02/2008. It was L’s birthday, and she brought in a gorgeous cake for afternoon tea. I asked for permission to take a few photos before afternoon tea commenced and the hungry hoards appeared. When I peeked into the cardboard box, I was amazed by the cake inside – I’d never seen a spectacular pink, brown and cream coloured cake like this one ever before!

The cake was garnished with piped cream and dark chocolate swirls topped with chocolate cigars (I know that’s not their name, but that’s how I’ve always referred to them) and teardrop-shaped pieces of chocolate with an orange and white patterning that reminded me of a formica tabletop.

I think what made this cake look so appealing was the marbled swirling of pink, brown and white. It looked as though someone had poured pink, brown and white liquid icings all over the cake at the same time.

The name “mudcake” was somewhat misleading through – as you can see, the cake is definitely not mudcake! It tasted to me like marble madeira cake that you can buy from the supermarket. That is not a bad thing, as I’ve always liked marble madeira. And yes, the pink bits of cake did taste like strawberry, the brown like chocolate, and the “white” parts vanilla. The best part of the cake though, was the icing – it tasted like ice cream! Obviously, it wasn’t cold like ice cream, but it tasted creamy and rich like ice cream.

I wasn’t going to have any cake as I’ve been planning from now on to just photograph our office morning and afternoon teas but not eat them… but I just couldn’t resist.