The Humble Gourmand

Of all the year’s events, one that inspires mild dread is my wife’s birthday. Not the day itself — usually an enjoyable whirlwind of presents, barbecues and excessive drinking — but the challenge: finding a present that is interesting / exciting / memorable / inspired / preferably all of the above.

This year, joy of joys, I did pretty well on the present. Even still, I made a crucial mistake: I gave it to her a week early. Thus I still needed to spring a surprise on the day itself.

Luckily for me, one thing I do that consistently throws up “fun” surprises is cooking. I figured baking a exciting and memorable cake could be the way to go. It would be a chocolate sponge, covered in decorative icing to resemble an iceberg…. with penguins… and blue jelly (Jell-O?) for the sea. I ask you: who doesn’t love a cake?

Well, I guess it depends on the cake. Here’s a list of the problems I encountered.

• I’d never made a cake before (see Problem 2) and my first endeavor was for a special occasion. I probably should have had a practice run-through. This opportunity did not present itself. The only evening I had to myself in the weeks running up to the birthday was the night prior, leading to a hectic, five-hour kitchen session which was nothing if not exciting and memorable.

• Not having baked anything before, I need a trustworthy recipe. My favourite foodie (Alison) generously shared an awesome one for chocolate genoise (a classic French sponge cake). The recipe was excitingly targeted at pastry school students, and American ones at that. This was very cool, but it lead to a couple problems of its own (see Problem 3).

• Americans and Brits, famously, use different terminology in a number of areas. Baking is one of them. Luckily, there were no “cups” in this recipe, which mystify most of us on my side of the Atlantic. But there is “parchment paper” (non-greaseproof) and “cake flour” (non-self-rising, as far as I can tell). On my visit to the supermarket, I find neither. Eventually I have to compromise: greaseproof baking paper and self-rising sponge-cake flour. I hope the self-rising flour will counteract the stubbornly non-stick baking paper (spoiler: it doesn’t).

• Back in the kitchen, the cake-making becomes more predictable: Beating eggs, mixing flour, etc. are all things I have seen people do on TV and can mimic pretty well. However — and equally predictably — flour and eggs go pretty much everywhere except inside the bowl, which makes the cake about a third the size I need it to be. Cocoa powder is apparently lighter than air and floats up towards the ceiling in huge clouds.

Ten minutes of mixing later, the mixture tastes pretty amazing (many thanks to Alison and her baking expert friend, Julia, for that). So I put it in the oven and very brief 15 minutes later it seems done (a sharp knife comes out clean). Unfortunately, I have been defeated by the greaseproof paper, as well as my own clumsy mixing, most probably. The cake hasn’t risen very well. It’s about an inch high.

• In addition to not stocking good parchment paper or cake flour, the supermarket doesn’t have blue jelly, which forces me to improvise for the iceberg’s much-needed sea. I opt for light-green jelly and blue food colouring. The result is an unattractive shade of dark green, rather like a chemical spill. She’ll get the idea.

After all that, icing the cake is the easy part; I have ready-made slabs of decorative white icing that go on like a dream. Little cones of black icing with a mix of yellow/red for the beaks and feet and more white for the stomachs result in some decent-looking penguins.

Thankfully, this visual trickery takes attention away from the rather compact sponge cake underneath. My wife seems to like it anyway — “memorable and interesting,” which I call a success!

1. Tory

   June 8 2:23 p.m. 1

   This is hysterical - thanks so much for sharing your cake-baking adventure with us, Alex! I had a disastrous baking mishap myself when I tried to bake chocolate chip cookies (with my standard American recipe) while abroad in Scotland... and I must say, thumbs up to you for maintaining the edibility of your cake, haha! (Lets just say that, in a pinch, lard does NOT, i repeat NOT substitute in any way for Crisco!!) Keep up the strong work :)

2. Alex

   June 18 2:48 a.m. 2

   Hi Tory, thanks for your kind words! I'm thinking of giving cookies a go soon - I'll take your advice to steer clear of lard :)

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