Savour - cake
This is savour: notes on the delicious things in life, delivered every Wednesday. Thank you for being a free member! If you enjoy getting these emails or find yourself telling your pals about them, you may want to consider upgrading your subscription. For £3.50 a month, you’ll receive savourites, my Friday dispatch of notes from the week, along with recommendations of things to read, eat and generally indulge in, and support my work more meaningfully. I clocked the groceries in the bag on the kitchen floor, the tell-tale pink of the icing sugar box. In seven years, I have never known M bake. But here were the eggs, the sugar, the self-raising flour. Here sat the makings of a cake. At first I kept my distance from the proceedings. I went out into the hut to work and occasionally clocked the pair of them in the kitchen, M with the baby up on his shoulder, working at something with his free arm. When I eventually went in the air was thick with a kind of vague domestic tension. The baby was squeaking, my ancient and rudimentary electric hand whisk was sending small clods of buttery sugar onto the floor. I offered to cream it for him, relieved that I no longer had to pretend not to know what was going on. M continued to meticulously cut out circles from baking paper. I picked up the baby, quietly switched the oven on and mentioned something about putting the butter in the microwave for five seconds on my way out. The day wore on and I learned that M was not attempting some kind of grand patisserie but rather the “Very Easy Birthday Cake” on the BBC Good Food’s website. Undoubtedly, I love him more for this. I turned 28 days after we met and to mark the occasion then he stuck a candle in a Mr Kipling viennese whirl. Since then, I’ve organised my own birthday cakes: I am a big birthday person, he is - was - not. This year, when I idly mentioned picking up a cake, he said: “Well, I thought C and I would bake one”. And so they did. As I pushed butter into sugar with the back of the spoon I was back in the kitchen I’d grown up in, doing the same thing in my mother’s large metal bowl. She raised us on cake: buns, the Northern parlance for fairy cakes, sat in large Tupperware for us to eat when we came home from school. Birthday cakes were a feat of fondant and that year’s childhood obsession. My sister and I still maintain she hasn’t let us in on her actual recipe for flapjack, for ours never turn out as winningly sticky. I’ve become an adult who has shunned baking - too precise, too laboured, it somehow always makes me palpably sweaty - but in the process I forgot that I was a teenager who baked often. In watching M teach himself to make a Victoria sponge, floury iPhone in hand, I remembered the failsafe equation at the heart of the recipe: two eggs, four ounces of everything else. I remembered the white cloud that would dust the dark granite of the worktop, and the soft well I’d make for the eggs. I remembered the wrap and pull of the apron around my waist - something Rebecca May Johnson writes so well about in Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen - and watching the remnants of the batter collect on the spatula if you applied the right level of pressure as you ran it around the bowl. I remembered the spring of a cooked sponge beneath a probing finger, and the hot air smell the whole process left in my hair. He used salted butter to make the icing and I heard my mother come out of my mouth when I said, gently: “next time, pick up some Flora”. I thought about fast-forwarding to a future where I would help C make M a cake as I stopped him from putting in too much food colouring so the icing would be the softest of pinks. My wrist gave in to muscle memory as I pulled a knife around the buttercream, smoothing it into waves. Part of me was a teenager again, standing on the other side of the kitchen, hearing my mum say: “That cake needs icing, if you fancy?” I always fancied, truth be told. There is such deep satisfaction in blending fat and sugar, watching it curdle into something new and then transforming again under the command of a bone-handed knife. In the end, it was a good cake. The crumb was light, the rise was consistent, the sponge palest gold and sweet. The icing wasn’t too thick. M placed dark, glistening Amarena cherries around the edge and they left a pretty deluge of dark pink syrup. I put it on my favourite plate, I blew out the candles while holding the baby, there was just enough for my sweet-toothed friend to have an extra slice. You’re a free subscriber to savour. If you enjoy my work, you can support it by becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll receive subscriber-only savourites - weekly dispatches of good morsels I’ve encountered - as well as access to exclusive events, the savour community and the newsletter archive. |
Older messages
savourites #62: birthday special
Friday, September 22, 2023
new year's resolutions
lace
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
on inheritance
heartstopper
Sunday, September 17, 2023
on growing up
savourites #61: away special
Sunday, September 17, 2023
tiny holiday expectations
savourites #60
Friday, September 8, 2023
sushi go | weird summer | the bear
You Might Also Like
"The Excursion" by Tu Fu, translated by Florence Wheelock Ayscough
Sunday, May 19, 2024
How delightful, at sunset, to loosen the boat! Facebook Twitter Instagram Poem-a-Day is reader-supported. Your gift today will help the Academy of American Poets continue to publish the work of 260
“WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT” (SHORT STORY)
Sunday, May 19, 2024
The old poet would say hello to everyone. So everyone is shocked when he seems to have simply vanished, disappeared. After a lifetime of living in the city, no one can find him. “Warning: Distressing
Blake Lively Just Wore The One-And-Done Outfit Of Our Dreams
Sunday, May 19, 2024
So chic.
1 Kettlebell. 30 Minutes. Total Body Strength
Sunday, May 19, 2024
Mens Health Shop logo Get shredded all over in just 30 days! No Gym Required: Kettlebells One Kettlebell, Serious Results One Kettlebell, Serious Results Want to build major muscle? Save yourself some
Over 65% Off Tech, Gym Gear, and More From Amazon’s Memorial Day Sale
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Memorial Day sales typically start a few weeks before the actual holiday weekend, which is May 24th through the 27th this year. Amazon kicked off the celebration early with discounts on everything from
The Week in Review
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Week of May 13th — Inflation Eases, South Surges, Construction Cools ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
11 of the Best Methods for Decluttering Your Home
Saturday, May 18, 2024
30 of the Horniest Erotic Thrillers Ever Made. There are many effective methods you can use to declutter—you should choose the right one for you and your home. Not displaying correctly? View this
Joy Annoy
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Why is it annoying when people love things you hate? ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Weekend: Can You Fix a One-Sided Friendship? ❤️🩹
Saturday, May 18, 2024
But first: all the sales worth shopping this week — Check out what we Skimm'd for you today Subscribe Read in browser May 18, 2024 Daily Skimm Header Image But first: all the sales worth shopping
"Night-Piece" by Solomon ibn Gabirol, translated by Emma Lazarus
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Night, and the heavens beam serene with peace, Facebook Twitter Instagram Poem-a-Day is reader-supported. Your gift today will help the Academy of American Poets continue to publish the work of 260