One last grapefruit

They say that when you flip a coin to decide an outcome, you should listen to the voice inside you. As the coin spins mid-air, the chances are that the voice will be urging the coin to land on one particular side. Deep down, this is the option you actually yearn.

It’s true. Taking a step back in time, that decision was there, inside, before you even reached for the coin, but it wasn’t easy to isolate from all the background noise.

The coin flip is a trigger. Creating a moment in time when a decision becomes clear. Not that a coin is the only trigger of this kind. Thank goodness. Otherwise we’d be unable to walk down a street, or sit in a restaurant, without risk of injury from flying coins. Can you imagine?

I seem to have reached a decision on how I want to use this space. Turns out that as soon as I put out there that I might give up this space, my inner voice started yelling. I didn’t want to stop. I just wanted to change my approach to blogging. I’m removing the parts that bug me. I’ve set myself new challenges, which I’m really excited about. The changes are subtle. Hopefully regular readers won’t even notice, but to me it will be refreshing. I need it.

Feels like a moment to put on the kettle and offer a celebrational cake. Too early for anything else.

Which brings me smoothly on to another refreshing choice I’ve made this week. Grapefruit cake.

Our weekly veg/fruit box is delivered at the end of the week. The contents are decided by the supplier which means that inevitably there are some items I wouldn’t have chosen. The day before delivery, I check in the fridge to see what needs using up, and this week two grapefruits stared back at me.

We’re not big grapefruit eaters, which should explain why these particular grapefruits were billy-no-friends in our fridge. Now if they were lemons, I’d make a cake, add it to a drink or maybe cook it with chicken, or salmon, without a hesitation.

First choice would be a lemon cake. I love lemon drizzle cake. More than any other cake.

We used to have a bread lemon tree in our back garden when I was younger. The fragrance was something else, although I think the local children probably enjoyed the actual fruit more than us, as the fruits used to vanish.

I digress. Back to the grapefruits in my fridge. As I stared defiantly back at the grapefruits, I remembered a recipe I’d read, a while ago, for grapefruit cake. It caught my eye as it included the segments, which made me wonder if it would work for lemons. (I don’t think it would, but I might still give it a go.)

I’ll admit it took me a few minutes to reach the point, but once the penny dropped, I accepted that in the absence of lemons, I could make grapefruit cake.

So I did.

It was a big success. Enough for me to contemplate adding grapefruits to my shopping list in future. Can I admit, I was even a tad disappointed that they weren’t in this week’s fruit box!

Want the recipe? Its straightforward. It’s a basic sponge cake, but with added segments and zest.

I reckon that most citrus fruit could be substituted for the grapefuit. It almost feels like a challenge. I might try the kiwi fruit from this week’s box.

Linking up to Sara’s Craft Schooling Sunday