An ode to cake

food to keep going, vol 1

Hello friends,

Lately I’ve been thinking about another dimension of my writing life: food writing. This was kick-started back in 2005 when a dear friend who was working at as an editor at a London publishing house was visiting and gifted my children with a newly published book she had edited (500 Cupcakes: that little pink volume with cupcakes on each page was a huge hit with my daughters, they flipped through it endlessly until the pages fell off the spine.) I had made some squares in anticipation of my friend’s visit (for some reason I can remember exactly what squares: it was a Martha Stewart recipe for lime squares with a pistachio crust. I hadn’t ground up the pistachios quite enough and the crust did not cooperate with the filling the way it should.) I remember standing in the kitchen, struggling to cut the crumbly concoction into actual squares, telling her she should do 500 Squares next, listing off the various squares, bars and slices that could be included.

“Write up a synopsis for it,” she told me, and I thought she was joking, until a few weeks later when a contract for a synopsis landed in my inbox from one of her colleagues who also thought 500 Squares might be a possible instalment in their 500 series. I wrote that synopsis, and nothing ever came of it, but somehow it was all the proof they needed that I was equipped to write for them, and thus began what I now think of as my adventures in bulk food writing. (Ever grateful to my friend for this opportunity - thank you Jenny!) I was almost done my third cookbook for Quarto when the 2008 recession hit the publishing world hard and it was with no small relief on my part that the contract for my fourth book was cancelled and I did not have to tackle 500 Salads. Instead, I went off in search of a local food writing gig, and thought I had landed my dream job when I got the Local Food Reporter position with EAT Magazine in 2009. It was indeed a dream job in term of writing assignments and the food experiences they often entailed, however, not quite a dream job on the financial remuneration side of things. So I went back to the library world, where I have remained ever since, happily (mostly) combining library work with writing where possible. Library work has provided stability (not to mention glorious paid vacation days, sick days, extended health and dental benefits and a pension plan - I recognize how incredibly lucky I am to have all these things) however in recent years it has rather edged out the writing. I was hanging on to one regular column at the bimonthly EAT until it was sadly and quite abruptly shuttered earlier this year. I told myself that I would spend the time that freed up on a writing project that has been building in the margins over the past year, and that is indeed where I’m putting most of my writing energy these days. But recently, I have started to miss having a reason to write about food. Then it occurred to me that maybe I don’t need a special reason to write about food. Or perhaps I still have one. Because when it comes down to it, food is quite a crucial way to keep going, isn’t it? I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to write about it here. One whole year, in fact!

That’s right, today marks one full year since I hit publish on my first how to keep going post here on Substack. I think this calls for cake.

The cake counter at the wonderful Ruth and Dean. When I searched ‘cake’ in my phone’s photo album, it brought up 429 images.

I actually think a lot of things call for cake. I have been a fan of cake for as long as I can remember. The two central cake influences in my life were my mother, who made cakes only for birthdays, and then made them exclusively from scratch, and my paternal grandmother, who made cakes almost daily, and almost always from either a Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines box, whichever one was on sale that week. She loved to put on a proper tea around 5pm on a summer afternoon, and have at least two cakes, if not three, on offer. She would often announce in the early hours of the morning, to anyone listening, “well, that’s two cakes baked and iced,” leaving the rest of us who had yet to accomplish anything other than eating breakfast feeling rather unproductive. If the timing was right, she would let me help her make the icing. I remember sitting close to her, enveloped in the small fog that always surrounded her - it was created by the combination of her Paco Rabanne perfume and the Virginia Slim cigarette that was perpetually perched between her lipsticked lips, long tail of ash growing and ever waiting to be tapped into an ashtray but rarely making it to that destination. I sat with her, watching the ash grow, stirring the ingredients together with a fork, carefully crushing the lumps of icing sugar, anticipating the cake we would have for tea that afternoon.

I loved them indiscriminately, the box cakes or from scratch, though my mother’s orange cake was always my top favourite. The recipe is featured in her cooking scrapbook, where she collected recipes from friends and relatives and cut others out of newspapers or magazines. After she died I took it to print shop and had copies made for myself and each of my siblings, so we could each have our own copy of these important family recipes. I looked at the recipe then, but didn’t make it - I was put off by the number of steps involved. It does take longer than most cakes, as it requires carefully peeling and segmenting several oranges, until your hands are very sticky and you are quite fed up of the whole process, but is definitely worth the effort. I rediscovered it in the early days of the pandemic, when it seemed like there was all the time in the world to sit and meditatively separate orange flesh from pith. There was also all the time in the world to sit and enjoy a slice with a cup of tea, and it was both the act of making it and eating it that brought comfort to those days filled with uncertainty. I joked about writing “happy first pandemic!” on the top, but stopped short of actually doing so, recognizing that sometimes my attempts to inject some levity into serious situations can come across as a bit too flippant.

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A few weeks ago, a beautiful drawing of a cake by Lucy Wadham popped up in my notes feed. I was so impressed, both by the drawing and the idea of buying yourself such a gorgeous cake.

Then a few days later, I was looking at a post on India Knight’s Substack and saw this cake, which looked so much like the cake in the drawing I had just been admiring. It was like when you learn a new word, and then you see/hear it everywhere. Except with cake. The seashells with pearl details, the rosettes with two thin lines of icing, the thicker line of ruffles between the seashells. It was too much alike to be a coincidence, I thought.

Determined to discover where this magical vintage inspired cake came from, I used the Google lens, which led me to this:

Please note this cake is unavailable on Dec 17 and 24.

Isn’t it a thing of beauty? I was getting a bit obsessed with this cake, as you can see. I felt like a cake detective. “Look," I said, as I showed the photos on my phone to my 22 year-old daughter, an impressive baker in her own right. “They must all be from this same London bakery, don’t you think?”

“I mean, maybe?” she answered, clearly not as excited by this online investigation as I was. “Vintage cakes are really in right now. They could all just be the same style, but from different bakers. Are you showing me this because you want me to make you a cake like that for your birthday?”

I stopped to think about this. Is that why I was so fixated on this cake? My birthday was coming up. Did I want this cake for my own? “No,” I told her. “I do think it’s a particularly aesthetically pleasing cake, but I also think that would be more buttercream than I would find enjoyable.” She agreed. (I ended up having my usual choice, made by my husband who is also a fan of the box cake: a Duncan Hines Butter Pecan cake with just the right amount of made from scratch vanilla icing. It did not disappoint.)

My favourite place to get a slice of cake in town is Ruth and Dean. I remember how the day after the 2016 US election they made a beautiful cake adorned with the message “fuck the patriarchy” in elegant icing script. (Yes I ate a slice of that cake and it helped me to keep going.) Last week they posted the photo below. There it was again, the recurring vintage inspired ruffles of icing with cherries perched on top. And perhaps also a new motto to see me into my 48th year?

What is your favourite cake? I’d love to hear about it. Do you seek out cake as a comfort food, or is it only for celebrations? And would you like to read more ‘food to keep going’ instalments here? I promise to include some other foods than cake. Maybe even some recipes. Let me know!

Sending love,

Rebecca

PS. I wrote this newsletter over a few days, and when I finished it off last night, something prevented me from hitting the ‘publish’ button, and I left it in the drafts folder, where it joined several other drafts that have never made it out into the world. It’s the inner critic that I wrote about a few weeks ago, rearing her head again: “who wants to read about your obsession with cake, anyway? How is this useful to anyone? Isn’t this all a bit boring?” I haven’t come up with any satisfactory answers to those questions, but I’m going to hit publish anyway. Thank you for reading my nonsense!