Red Wine Chocolate Cake with Dark Chocolate Glaze

What do you do when you have 12 bottles of opened wine? Besides drinking all of them I mean.

Oh, wait. Are you one of those people who can drink an entire bottle of wine by yourself? Then we should definitely be friends. I'll trade you - wine for food.

One of the perks of my job is the access to free wine. That, along with drinking on the job and the occasional free meal. Once in a while we get a bunch of samples for tasting but we don't usually finish them. They get stuck in the fridge and are eventually forgotten. Googling red wine recipes gave me a few ideas but this stood out the most to me.

Red wine? Check.
Chocolate cake? Check.
More chocolate? Just hand me a slice already!

The Best Chocolate Mudcake (Pam's Chocolate Mudcake)

Let me introduce you to my new favourite chocolate cake. It has a very rich flavour, is extremely moist - almost like a chocolate fudge cake and also dense enough to carve. Not to mention that it is extremely easy to make. Mudcakes are ideal for beginners as slight errors in measurements or over-mixing will not affect the results. They also have a long shelf life and they taste even better with age. The only trouble you would have is having to wait so long to eat it! 

I made mine with dark chocolate ganache and found it a little too rich, but super delicious nonetheless. Next time round, I'll definitely try it with a raspberry or salted caramel filling to balance the taste a little.

Whole Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Ganache Glaze

As a child, I never enjoyed eating fruits. I didn't dislike them or anything, I just didn't feel very strongly about them. As an adult, I eat fruits out of necessity, to strengthen my immune system and for better skin. When I started baking and reading food blogs regularly, I discovered how wonderful fruits really were, how they can be incorporated into recipes and how they intensify flavours.

It was a whole new world for me. Grocery shopping is now incomplete without stopping by the produce section. Like a kid in a candy store, I would race to the fruits section and start picking up the fruits and smelling them. Oranges smell sweet and fruity, lemons have a strong citrusy scent and apples smell so fresh and clean, like the air after a bout of heavy rain.