Genoise

There may come a time, and I'm hoping it's not in the near future, when I'm lying in a hospital bed following a triple heart bypass. I slowly awaken from the anaesthetic and in the mild confusion that follows, I wonder how I came to be in this strange place. Then I remember the first Genoise I made. I remember going to the scales in the kitchen and weighing out 280g of butter for the icing alone, looking at the yellow brick of fat, and thinking, 'that can't be good for you.' Then I remember whisking sweet meringue into the butter, plastering a slick of chocolate icing all over the sponge, and pressing praline into the sides. Then memories of chocolate fill my head, delicate curls scraped from the thinnest, darkest sheet to decorate the top. The day I made that Genoise, the day I had three, no four slices of the lightest sponge with the buttery-est icing in the space of three hours, that was the day that would put me on the path to the intensive care unit.

It was worth it.