When will this be over?

Not anytime soon it seems.

In the meantime we learn to live with new variations of normal life.

In a bid to make working life more bearable and bring back a sense of civility into the workplace, we were asked as a team what might foster this. There were many responses and one of the ones that came into life was an idea for regular virtual coffee and cake chats. It was felt that meeting on Wednesday afternoon on MS Teams for a chat would help with team bonding and bring back a sense of community that had been smashed by the arrival of COVID-19.

We had our first meeting a few weeks ago (I’m not sure when the next one is, maybe I’ve missed some…!) and I was suprised by how nice it was. I sat in my study at home, stopped dictating and correcting letters and checking my e-mails, and listened to and spoke with my colleagues about this and that, that and this. It was fun, I found myself laughing and feeling a little warm inside. I made a chocolate cake in honour of the meeting and ate it with a cup of tea and some strawberries.

That evening I made another chocolate cake to take into work for my colleagues for the following day. I think they liked it. I certainly enjoyed making it. It is covered in a chocolate ganache made from dark chocolate and olive oil which was really nice and easy to make. The chocolate cake recipe itself I now cannot find! I think it was a recipe my sister used that took from her but now I cannot seem to find anywhere in my usual digital places/notebooks. I might well have written both recipes down, sometimes I do that, but I can’t find the piece of paper I put it on. Well if I ever find it/ask my sister to re-send the link, I will edit this post accordingly!

Lol…If I make to another Wednesday afternoon coffee and cake chat, I guess I won’t be bringing this homemade chocolate cake.