Cake Philosophy

Picture if you can a dinner table with a few Army officers assembled and a few of their wives, oh plus little old me! It's only a few years ago, it's summer in Cyprus, no one is old or crusty or has a handlebar moustache. No one is over forty! One colourful and just a bit sexist character has been holding fort for most of the meal, entertaining the rest of us with much hilarity.

He then launches into a discussion of the wives left at home while husbands go off on exercises and tours. Imagine a public school accent, a little like Lieutenant George in Blackadder (the character is in fact a Lieutenant Colonel) as he said, "I don't know what they're on about really. If they get sad, just do what I tell my wife to do. Go bake yourself a cake and cheer yourself up!"

The sheer crassness and disbelief of this piece of advice had the table in stitches. Said officer was on a tour in Cyprus and did not have his wife with him but I would so like to meet her!

So it was that I found myself having a bit of a low day today. Couldn't concentrate, couldn't settle on doing anything. With David Eccles' (I can't forget him) advice having been ringing in my ears for over 10 years now, I tried out his philosophy and set to a Victoria sponge.

Now being a therapist, I think people believe I have the perfect life and am completely together and don't get bothered by anything, but hey, remember the real world? It is hard sometimes because I often find myself doing the very things I help my clients to stop. Eating the wrong things mainly!

So you should NEVER use food as a comforter. Food is fuel for the body, which tastes delicious. But the difference in cake making is the making. Baking a cake is creating something, an artisan skill, something which humans often don't do any more. We live instant lives, we buy things that factories or other people have made in bulk. That's what accounts for the rise in interior design programmes - we want to create. We want to make our mark, to see that we have achieved something physical which we can see.

So I made my Victoria sponge and great fun it was too. Until I found that the strawberry jam had gone mouldy in the fridge. Sigh. Ah well, I sandwiched it together with buttercream icing anyway and it tasted yummy! I haven't binged on it and I won't eat it in one go.

When I was a teenager I was in fact a demon cake maker but these sort of skills need practice and I am sadly well out of that practice now. But it was an honest and delicous effort and actually it has lifted me a bit.

The philosophy of sponge - try it for yourself!