The ace of cakes

I had been told to make a cake. Not just any cake, but the cake of my flatmate’s dreams, for her birthday weekend away. It is a cake that as far as I can tell was invented by a great blogger called Apollina, and takes inspiration from one of Stella McCartney’s collections. With the benefit of hindsight, trying to cook something that is cooler than I am may well have been my first mistake. Anyway, it looked amazing and my flatmate was excited and her wonderful mother had agreed to get all the ingredients for me and really, how hard is it to bake a cake?

I’ll allow myself a brief, but unmistakeably hollow, laugh at this point.

A faulty workman blames his tools. Not me. I was the only tool in the room. Something bad happened to this cake and I don’t know what. It could be the fact that I tipped some of the flour onto the kitchen surface, but what are the chances of that being the exact bit that had all the baking soda in it? It could have been the time for which the two cake tins were left on the side whilst we went for a walk to find bloody marys, but doesn’t batter benefit from a rest? Did I somehow horrendously mix up the metric equivalent of American cup measurements? (No). All I know is that I did it step by step, word for word, according to the recipe. And it failed.

My flatmate’s mother is so kind that she didn’t even let me see the sad, unleavened results. When I finally discovered them later on, it was hard to tell what had sunk more: the cake mix, or my heart. They looked like I was planning some kind of revival of a Biblical exodus story, but with sweet flatbreads for a modern audience.

The next evening, we gamely decided to sandwich it with lemon curd and try to ice it anyway, but the thing was unpalatably dense. I wouldn’t have necessarily backed a brick wall if it had come to a showdown between the two entities. Some days later, back at home, I received the heartening news that the birds were very much enjoying it, but one had a suspiciously broken beak.

My flatmate is still waiting for her birthday cake, and I am building up the courage to do it again. They say the definition of madness is to do the same thing twice and expect different results. So, I am not expecting a different result. I am expecting to make the birds of south west London very happy and/or have a home baked missile for the children who hang around by the bus stop.

This is what it should have looked like. I have added a camera effect called ‘sparkles’ which I feel reflects its heretoforth mythical status: