Tinkle tinkle as a spoon raps a cake stand to bring the newly-gathered around the table crowd to silence.
It is the inaugural meeting of the Loire Valley Clandestine Cake Club.
The theme is "Favourite Cakes" so we are each invited to introduce our cake to say whatever we wish.
I had made a spongy gingerbread cake. Often I don't follow the recipe faithfully, as my gingerbread cake is often a mixture of several recipes including Parkin, but this time I measured exactly! My recipe was from my favourite Penguin paperback circa 1973, author Margaret Bates. All the pages are loose from the binding!
Unfortunately, I could only sample four because I felt full, but at the end of the two hours we took as many slices as we could fit into the containers that we had brought for such purpose. I chose those that I had not sampled and those that I enjoyed. Next day for morning coffee they were just the ticket!
Before we went home there was pink bubbly to bless the afternoon and to salute Jean for such wonderful organisation.
it was interesting to see a variety of cakes. Many people had chosen walnuts as a main ingredient or as a decorated topping.
There was a delicious light chocolate sponge and a Carrot and Cointreau cake with a cheese and walnut topping... a strawberry sponge where the whipped cream had come from England. Yummy!
There was a savoury cake too ... in France 'cake' is savoury, un gateau is sweet, unless they are referring to English cakes.
In conversation with a friend we discussed the singular and plural of the noun 'cake'. If there is 'cake' en masse then it is plural without an 's'.... but of course 'cake' is also singular depending on the context and meaning of the sentence. This is to do with countable and non countable nouns.
So let us have more cake on another occasion and eat it!
The spongy gingerbread cake was delicious. I loved the old recipe book.
ReplyDeleteWe are eating what is left of our bit of spongy gingerbread....
ReplyDeletesliver by sliver....
just to make it last!
Until I print out the recipe book pix I photographed....
And that recipe book is what real recipe books should look like....
falling apart through use....
often with "tweaks" scribbled in the margins...
and less often, whole recipes slipped in on writing paper.
My Gran's old recipe book ...now long gone....
[Mother tidied it up via the charity shops]...
was held together with a length of what was pink ribbon...
glued to the spine.
Brown parcel tape had been used to make the spine wider than the original....
and it had envelopes glued together inside both covers...
and hand-written recipes and very yellowed newspaper cuttings were crammed into every one!!
It had her initials and maiden name on the front cover...
on the outside.... L.E. Allmann... in beautiful copperplate script...
If anyone out there ever finds it in a sale....
can I have it back!!?
Please!!