Weekend food with Darina Allen: Blathnaid’s Chocolate Cake

I’VE ONLY just discovered how Mother’s Day came about.

I recently came across a piece about an American lady called Anne Jarvis who conceived the idea of Mother’s Day in the early 1900s after the death of her own mother. She imagined it as a way of honouring the sacrifices mothers make for their children and how it’s not until we have our own children that we truly begin to appreciate the heroism of our own mothers.

I can’t imagine how young mothers (and fathers) manage to juggle the responsibilities of motherhood and a job nowadays — heroic ‘is truly’ an understatement and if ever a celebration was justified its Mother’s Day.