The Dickens of a Baker

Or

A Tale of Two Cakes

By Ronnie Bray

It felt like the time for me to cobble together my annual traditional English Christmas Cake. For
the benefit of the colonials amongst whom I dwell, this commodity is not to be confused with the
much-maligned lightweight American fruitcake.

It really did feel like it was time, because the better cakes are always made around six weeks
before the Christmas Feast. The judicious interval ‘twixt baking and consumption permits the
Masterpiece requisite time to marinate in its diurnally replenished juices that eventually mature
the confection’s assortment of piquant flavours into the exceptional luscious fruitiness that is the
unique signature of the Monarch of Cakes.

The fact was that when I ‘felt’ it was the season to create my annual extravagance it was not six
weeks before Christmas Day, but ten weeks to the Feast of Feasts. This verity had escaped my
notice. I blame my apparent indifference to precise dating on the toll that the Second World War
inflicted on my young mind.

“What’s four weeks too many when Christmas dinner is at stake?” I reasoned, and got on with
the task of finding the stuff I needed to complete my cake according to my copy of the highly
prized ‘Bero Cook Book.’ That is pronounced, ‘Beero Cooooook Booooook’ in my home town
of Huddersfield, recognised world wide as the beating heart of Yorkshire?

Four weeks in the largo or retirement hardly registers, whether waiting on it or spending it. It is,
when all is said and done, only time, and, fast or slow, will come and go, and no one the wiser
except those to be hung by the neck at dawn on the morrow. I wasn’t, I was only making a cake.

Here in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert there is little call for the finer things of English cuisine, such
as candied peel, currants, ground almonds, glacé cherries, and Valencia raisins, etc, and asking
for them at one of the high class grocery emporiums, such as Wal-Mart, Frys, or Sprouts, that
sell exotic foods, but have not ventured into the exotica of traditional Victorian kitchens where
Christmas was, if not invented, then elaborated to become what it is largely today, that would aid
locals to get in touch with their noble heritages. Trying to find them was, it transpired, a futile
effort.

It was, as ‘Cuddles’ Zakal would have said, “A chasing after the mad gooses!” I would have to
concoct some of the essential from bits of plywood, cactus fronds, bits cut from old wellies, a
toilet roll holder, and a Blue Peter badge! And this in a land that is justifiably proud of its
English heritage!

There is something of sadness surrounding the confession of Americans that say, “My
grandmother came from England,” but who look peculiarly blank when asked the whereabouts
of where exactly it was that she was come from. It is as if England was a mile square
somewhere the other side of the Atlantic – or Pacific – oceans, depending on the confessor’s
grasp of what lies beyond their shores and in which direction.

Painfully, and with anguish of soul, I chose surrogate ingredients that would help me
approximate as closely as I could the grand affairs of my youth that were compounded, stirred,
and baked to perfection by Nanny Bennett in the little bow-legged Creda electric oven in the
cellar scullery-cum-kitchen at Fitzwilliam Street.

The term ‘candied peel’ became Gandhid Peel as a Sprouts’ shop assistant repeated back to me
what she imagined she heard me ask for. The manager was even more confused than she was.
As far as they knew, Gandhi didn’t have any peel, and so another potential portal to international
understanding slammed shut.

The young man in Fry’s abandoned his merchandise conveyance and went in search of candied
peel. He returned after a season empty-handed declaring that is was ‘probably a seasonal item.’
I agreed that it was seasonal and that the season was ‘upon us’ and it was needed to make the
seasonal cake so that it could mature in time for Christmas, the Season of Seasons.

Wal-Mart, busy catering for the poor among us, among which we are among, didn’t even try for
Anglo-Trad, but at least they didn’t laugh.

In the end, I used three kinds or raisins, some common walnuts, skin-clad almonds, mixed
ground, but unspecified, spice, and lemon and orange essences instead of candied peel. It could
work, and had done so before.

I mixed the stuff, and made a huge bowl full of gloop, adding molasses for colour and dark
flavour, and four of the biggest eggs I have ever seen. My baking tin was a seven-inch, non-stick
pan with the handles removed. I had used it last year with success and so dug it out to use again.

The recipe called for a lining of greased waxed paper on the bottom and around the sides of the
pan. Fitting the paper around the inside is easy, but getting a piece to fit the bottom has always
been problematic, and the older I get the less energy I have to apply to tricky projects.

I reasoned that it being a non-stick pan that the bottom of the cake would not stick to the bottom
of the pan, and especially since I used some WD40-type kitchen spray in the pan bottom for
quick release. It didn’t work! Perhaps I should have used penetrating oil?

Getting the baked cake out of the pan was a job for Woodrow-Taylor and they were not
anywhere to be seen. Manpower had no spare men to spare, and so it was me and my rubber
mallet against a pan that had the detaining characteristics of a black hole, albeit with none of the
charm.

Not willing to be beaten by such a small thing as a stuck cake in a non-stick cake tin, I soaked
the thing with molasses and let it penetrate. It penetrated, but had no observable effect. I poured
lemon juice around the edges of the cake and then went at it with a spatula until the sides were
unattached, expecting that the bottom having had a benevolent soaking from earlier molasses and
later citrus juice, would yield to the enticings of the rubber mallet on its belowment. It didn’t
budge!

It would not move, and I was almost ready to invoke oaths and execrations, but with my
customary generosity of spirit I raised the pan to a decent height and slammed it down hard on a
hard surface several times. There was a satisfying thud as the cake, an entity with the specific
gravity of the earth’s core, slid gracelessly out of the pan and landed head first on the surface.

“Aha!” cried the victorious confectioner. “Success!” The shout of triumph faded when I saw
that not all the cake was freed from its dungeon cell. A good third remained bound tight by the
non-slip surface, and what of the cake had exited had the sullen and uncompromising aspect of
an untidy slag heap!

I was encouraged that the innards of the mass were encouragingly moist. I re-inserted the
escaped part of the brick on its captive mate and pressed down to reunite what had been as
peremptorily separated, as had Joseph and his cunning brethren! The thought did enter my mind
that Ægypt was not too far for the cake to be gone, but it merely lay there challenging me to do
my worst.

The following morning the cake had reattached itself to the sides of the pan, making it necessary
to retrace the whole rigmarole of releasing it, bumping out the previously loose bit, and scooping
out the remainder from its prison with a cake server.

I stuck the lumps of cake onto the big piece that had broken loose and approximated a cakey
shape, as a sculptor might do with his clay bust that had fallen on the floor but was salvable.

Slowly it assumed reasonable proportions, except that a blindfolded phrenologist laying his
hands upon it would have read signal disaster from its bumps.

Having collected all reasonable particles, lumps, and bits I placed the whole in the well of a large
kitchen bowl where it did not touch the sides, and placed it in the fridge where it sits waiting for
disposal. What shall be the manner of its disposal depends on whether it is declared edible in a
week or so when I turn it out, slice some off one side, and eat it.

I do not care to know what Gordon Ramsey might make of it. It is my tradition, not his! And
there inside the fridge it sits. It is uncompromisingly stolid, incommunicative, and, I firmly
believe, shot through with enough insouciant irreverence to furnish a whole tribe of Luddites!

Today, I gathered what I could of ingredients and made another cake. I made this one in a nine-
inch non-stick cake tine that I lined with wax paper and placed a double do of waxed paper in the
bottom with industrial strength release fluid between the layers.

When it was cooked and cooled it fell out with a satisfying plop onto the worktop. Good lad! It
has a good, even colour, the density of an oaken gate post, and a remarkable consistent
conformation. All factors that bode well.
Although some of the ingredients, such as the candied pineapple pieces, are hardly traditional,
there are times when the best we can do is the best we can do, and a jury rigged confection is
better than no confection at all. Them’s my sentiments!

I must confess that my effort to make candied peel ganged agley. Cutting the peel and de-pithing
it was easy, but cooking it in heavily sugared water to crystallise the zest for mixing into the cake
to render subtle tangy flavours went wrong due to my preoccupation with a piece I was writing
in my scriptorium.

A non-too-subtle citrussy fragrance reeked into my nostrils and had me running to the kitchen in
time to witness my beloved candied peel become citrus peel á la caramel. Hoping to save
something of it, I poured the lot onto a dinner plate, whereupon it set solid and hasn’t moved
since. It did not find its way into the cake, nor will it.

I will search next for sufficient marzipan to cover the cake – or cakes – with a quarter inch
preparatory to concocting royal icing with which to cover the whole as if it were a snow scene
from the Old Country.

I cannot say that I am pleased with my efforts with this year’s Christmas Cakes. I speak the truth
when confessing, “It is a far, far worse thing I have done than I have ever done before!” Unless
we count the world’s largest and most impenetrable biscuit that should have been a sponge cake
in 1968.

I am on tenter-hooks to see how my traditional English mince pies turn out. I hope that the tale
of two cakes will be enough of the Dickens, and that the mincies will be so perfect that “Bah,
humbug!” shall not be heard in our lowly cottage this Yuletide.

Copyright © 2010 – Ronnie Bray