it’s a little sad, no? when things come to an end?

oh relax, you, my faithful four readers who come day after day, i’m not quitting the blog. not right now anyway, even though it’s too time-consuming, and exhausting, and… boring (or comment-unworthy, anyway), all terrible things to struggle with when you’re deciding whether or not to go on. and besides, it’s too hot to make that decision today.

no, i’m talking about zumbo. faster than i realised, the summer collection from adriano zumbo patissier is nearly upon us: tomorrow in fact, a rumble of foodbloggers informed me.

now, if you don’t count the pre-packaged single-serve blueberry pie that i bought myself on my birthday, i really have not had a birthday cake this year. (and if you do count it, well. it was still just a birthday pie wasn’t it?) either way, i thought yesterday was the perfect opportunity to finally get me the tanzanie before the winter cakes disappeared.

of course, now i am kicking myself, because i have left it too late to go back for seconds. here is a wonderful slab of decadent chocolate cake. if you stick a fork all the way down and break off a vertical portion, and put that in your gob, you will have a bit of creaminess here, and a bit of crunchiness there, and a rich, intensely chocolatey mouthful overall.

if you delicately pry each of the seven or so chocolatey layers apart, you will have the thinnest skin of dark chocolate ganache; milky chocolate mousse; a mysterious mass beneath that with a charred, smoky flavour; a voluptuous vanilla brulee; a crackly chocolate meringue; something i believe the menu describes as chocolate jelly, although it seemed a bit softer and fudgier; something salty! all on a base of flourless chocolate biscuit.

but no need to panic just yet: perhaps i can stretch it out another couple of days. i only managed half of it after all, while staying up too late last night watching “the shining” on tv, and even then i may have crossed my chocolate threshold.

and the cake peeking demurely round the back? you remember the cinque terre? chocolate mousse, lemon curd, raspberry cremeux, and candied olives beneath a quiff of billowing meringue? i was talking to the countergirl at the shop, innocently buying my tanzanie, when she suddenly said, “if you want that last cinque terre, i’ll give it to you.”

“i won’t say no,” i replied, calmly. if she could’ve spoken directly to my brain, she would have heard it screaming: yes! yes! yes!

oh, it was great to revisit. the kid — so unimpressed by the mango-caramel-lychee-chocolate-mint folly of last month — thought so too.