My first cake
It seems only fair that, at the beginning of an adventure to hear and share food stories from around the world, I show my culinary colours from the start.
Cake mix is an addiction, and for me the craving started young.
Crouched on the dark-tiled floor of our small kitchen, my older brother and I would clean the mixing bowl. There are still family wooden spoons worn at the end as we scraped their backs for that smooth, sugary mix.
When I was old enough my Mum wrote out the recipe and left me in the kitchen on my own for the first time. I was allowed to make the mix but wait until she was finished with her afternoon nap to put it into our electric oven.
Looking at this paper isn’t just a recipe to me. Aged 8, my brother, being four years older, would have started secondary school. This kitchen mixing bowl independence felt like a rite of passage.
It’s the colour of the paper covered in who-knows-what - a habit that continues in my kitchen today. To me, recipe books are living things (though hopefully not in the bacterial sense!). I have never been one for a fancy bookstand, preferring to break the spines with filled measuring jugs, their oily bases branding circles onto the page.
Using sunflower oil in a bake may seem bizarre. Only when I started baking at friends’ houses did I learn that butter can be used in baking. As a more expensive ingredient, butter was a treat saved in small doses for pastry making and white sauce.
This cake became my birthday cakes, it’s taste heady with the brief scent of candle smoke. It is the taste of a weekend afternoon, a slice portioned up its length perfect for little fingers, so fresh from the oven that the slightly crisp sponge hasn’t yet soaked in a layer of homemade jam.
20 years later that I still find the process of baking this addictive. I’ve given it a twist this time though - some rose essence and a fresh lemon curd.
Recipe - Rose cake with lemon curd
As written by Mum, 2008
For the cake:
8oz plain flour
5oz caster sugar
3 eggs
6fl oz sunflower oil
3 tablespoonfuls boiled water
3 flat teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp rose essence
Method:
TURN ON OVEN TO 190°C
1) Sieve flour, baking powder and caster sugar into bowl
2) Put oil and rose essence in measuring jug and break in eggs. Whisk together.
3) Add oil and eggs to flour and sugar. Mix.
4) Add water and mix.
5) Grease sandwich tins.
6) Divide mixture between tins and put in oven for 25 mins.
7) The cakes are ready when the bounce back slightly when pushed with a finger. Allow to cool, and sandwich with zingy lemon curd.*
*Nb. I made the lemon curd, but we all have different time pressures! Do whatever works for you. I used a BBC recipe.