Taste-and-Treats on the West Coast

Being a Granny to a 2 year old has certain duties attached to it... one of them is the making of a birthday cake! I love birthday cakes, especially those that don’t come from some shop but are homemade. So there I was last week with the task to produce a “beach cake”.. as Connor and his family live next to the beach it was definitely the way to go. I am fortunate enough to live in Cape Town where we have a shop that just does baking stuff and equipment! ( Baking Tin in Claremont). Having scoured the shop for anything beachy I started the elimination of my chocolate recipes in the many books lining my shelves. I decided on the absolute yummiest one I could find which is David Lebowitz. This recipe comes out of his wonderful book called “The Sweet Life in Paris” and can be bought here from Amazon.com. For the beach cake: 250 g bittersweet or semisweet chocolate ( I used half & half) 8 tbsp ( 120 g) unsalted butter 1/3 cup ( 65 g) sugar 4 large eggs at room temperature sepa