“Learning to bake perfectly,” Marguerite Pattern, the author of the 1962 book 500 Recipes For Families tells us, “is something anyone can learn with a little care and patience.”
500 Recipes for Families
“Even if you have had no experience in baking,” she continues, confidence oozing from her words, “if you follow my tips for easy baking to the letter, you should have no difficulty in making any one of the delicious cakes in this chapter – where it is a simple sponge or one of the more elaborate gâteaux.”
I knew I was in safe hands, Ms Pattern, the famed author of such titles as 500 Recipies for Slimmers, 500 Recipes for Fish Dishes and 500 Main Meals was guiding me step by step through the baking of anything from a simple sponge to one of the more elaborate gâteaux!1. I simply could not fail! I could almost taste the cake already. I believe they call it synaesthesia, I’m trying not to worry about it.
Grabbing my coat and a hastily scrawled shopping list and scurried off to the local supermarket to collect my ingredients.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the English supermarket at three thirty on a Sunday afternoon, but if you never had, then please consider the next paragraph a friendly warning. As I arrived I could almost taste the frustrated urgency of the shoppers as it got closer and closer to closing time. Those of you who are not aware from Britain will probably not realise that Britain has a very Christian view on shopping. In recent years things have improved and the shops have been able to open briefly on Sundays, but not for long! Even 24 hour supermarkets have to close at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. It’s something to do with the moral fibre of the country or that shops open at 6pm on a Sunday makes Jesus cry, or something. Honestly I’m not entirely sure, but suffice to say as I walked through the revolving doors to the local supermarket, shoppers strode around me with barely repressed anger, fixed expressions of annoyance fixed on their faces, daring the supermarket staff to even consider closing the shop whilst rushed to get an urgent can of kitty-chow whilst glancing at their fellow consumers as if they were specifically there to try and stop them from achieving their goas.
Mildly concerned at the state of society and beginning to think I needed to update my zombie survival bag, I quickly collected the munitions I needed, following Ms. Pattern’s instructions to the letter.
It was then I noticed a problem.
“Wait a minute” I loudly announced, causing irate shoppers to twitch and stare at me menacingly “this recipe is in ounces and all these ingredients are in grams.”
Soon I would make a mess
I admit it, I panicked. I didn’t have time to go home for the phone that I thought I’d left somewhere in the kitchen (but was unbeknownst to me, sitting in my jacket pocket) so that I could Google the weight conversions. So I did the only thing I could considering the circumstances.
I guessed.
I think I may have bought enough for about six chocolate cakes and as I left the shop, I ruminated that with luck at least one of the cakes I make would turn out presentable and tasty.
The recipe itself was pretty simple. All I needed to do was mix together the butter and sugar, fold in raw egg. Make a mess of the kitchen with melted chocolate, accidentally eat half the chocolate I melted, make some more, pour the two together, fold like I’ve never folded before and stick in the oven. Simple! A child could do it! Sadly there we not children available so I had to do it myself2.
I’ll be honest, I don’t think I followed the recipe to the letter. It was such a simple recipe that I might have got a little too cocky and I’ll admit somewhat sheepishly that I double guessed Ms. Pattern and reasoned that more chocolate was a vast improvement on less chocolate.
Thankfully the whole thing was captured on film.
Sir Mixalot
Here's one I prepared earlier
Brown goodness
The finished product!
Doesn’t that look lovely? You can almost taste the delicious moistness. Sadly I couldn’t. This, and I say this to pander to the interweb folks out there who get excited by the hilarity of memes, Cake is a lie. Although it is definitely a cake and I did definitely bake it. Don’t get me wrong; if challenge 66. was “Do not bake a crap cake”, I would certainly be in trouble but as the challenge said nothing of the quality of the cake I was supposed to make, I think I’ll be okay. The cake itself was all right. It was a bit stodgy, a little bit too firm and I’m glad I put too much chocolate in it to at least make it taste nice. It did by the way, it tasted lovely and I had two pieces.
I did not however have three pieces and the pigeons around our neck of the woods walked everywhere for a week.
So there we go, I have baked a cake.
1 – Not that I wanted to make elaborate gâteaux or anything else that could potentially be a character from Asterix for that matter.
2 – Joke courtesy of the estate of Groucho Marx
