My Very Last Post – Bye Guys!

Hey everyone,

I’m sorry it’s taken me a few extra weeks to post. I really did mean to post the recipe for my Millionaire’s Shortbread Cake in September, but over the summer, during my big break from blogging, I’ve realized something.

As much as I love blogging, it just doesn’t fit into my life anymore.

I started the blog in March 2013, when I was in university getting my Bachelor degree in English literature. Back then, it was just my Rocking Rebel boyfriend and myself, and I had a lot of time to experiment with new recipes in the kitchen and learn about food photography and blogging.

My life is completely and wonderfully different right now. These days, I’m the proud mother of a super active almost-two-year-old, who loves nothing better in the world than racing Lucy our dog to the park on his balance bike. I’m also working more. Along with my web management jobs, I’ve started working as a graphic designer. I just finished my first series of assignments last week and I’m already on my second assignment. In other words, I’m a happy, busy working mom. And blogging, or even baking? I feel like my time is too precious to spend it on blogging right now.

The past few years, I’ve approached my blog in a very professional way, taking the time to test and perfect recipes before I’d post them on the blog, honing my food photography skills, exploring different ways of connecting with my readers and learning how to monetize my blog. Consequently, blogging has always been a much-loved but very time-consuming hobby. But that didn’t matter back then, because all I wanted to do was work on my blog.

But my heart’s not with the blog anymore. It’s with my little boy on his balance bike ????

I’m really proud of everything I’ve accomplished over the years. From developing truly amazing recipes and taking all those beautiful photos, to helping my readers become better bakers. It’s been awesome! But I feel it’s time to let go of the blog now. It’s time for this project to end.

My plan is to turn The Tough Cookie into something that functions more like an online cookbook than an updating blog.

This means that most of the recipes will still be available to everyone who enjoyed reading my blog these past few years. It also means that I finally get to revisit the recipes myself (something that has proven to be pretty hard when you’re always working on new content), so now I’m finally going to make myself those delicious No-Bake Chocolate-Nutella Cheesecakes again!

To all my readers, thank you so much for all those sweets comments and emails, beautiful photos of cakes you made, great tips and treasured recipes. Thank you for all your support, and I wish you all the best in life!

Happy baking ♥︎

Nila

Oh, and about that Millionaire’s Shortbread Cake, you’re not going to believe this, but I’ve lost the recipe. I made the cake, wrote the recipe down, and I can’t find it anymore. So I’m not going to post it on the blog. Sorry 🙁 

If you want to make your own version, I alternated layers of vanilla cake (total of three layers) with rounds of millionaire’s shortbread (two in total) baked in a springform pan and used chocolate and caramel ermine buttercream to fill and frost the cake. I finished with a dark chocolate drip!