It was that time of year again to ‘brace, brace’, take a deep breath, gird the loins and try to bake the annual cake for the old ladies tea party. One that I host at 22 Dora once a year for a charity called Re-engage that helps bring older people together, thank god in cahoots with Janine – the other annual cake baker and my partner in culinary crime!
We have to host it in the rather cosy area in the top bit of the kitchen, as the guests are mostly too unable to navigate down the 6 steps to the white space, so the kitchen table has the garden table added to it, plus a pile of helpfully-narrower-than-ours chairs borrowed this year from Henry over the road.
Janine knocked out an excellent chocolate cake, complete with choc shavings on the top and I went for the ‘Easy Lemon Layer Cake’ on BBC Good Food. Easy my arse!!!! It took me pretty much 4 hours to make and I decided to be very brave and use the big food processor-y thing which is usually Hawksey’s domain. He was out but I managed to work out how to get the top bit to go up and down, sot the big metal bowl can come in and out. Then I thought I had sussed how to affix said metal bowl to the base, as it worked for the first 3 or so times when I had to stop the machine to scrap the contents back off the sides and to the bottom of the bowl.
On my next go, the bowl decided to detach itself and tried manfully to hurl itself and the contents onto the floor. My lightning reaction pickleball skills saved me – and it – as I managed to catch it en route. Thinking I had now worked out how to affix it, there was then an odd clunking sound as it was going round, so I tightened it and kept going with adding ingredients etc.
I then came to scrape it out into the tin and was pleased that it actually looked like cake slop (last year I left the eggs in a bowl on the counter and it took me a while to work out why the mix was so thick..). I thought I could feel the inverted steel bit in the base of the bowl as I was scooping it out, as the wooden spoon kept hitting something. At the very last moment – just before I was about to slam it all in the oven – I realised that the logo bit of the mixer had actually fallen off and into the mix and I was about to bake it… so that was the clunk I heard…! One very lucky escape.
We did somehow end up with two quite impressive cakes, plus 18 rounds of egg mayo, cheese, ham and tuna sarnies, shortbread rounds, Hawksey’s home made sausage rolls and several gallons of tea, ready to go. I made full use of my Amzazon-purchased first ever squeeze bag thingy to do piping. Arguably not quite Bake Off standard but useful to offset a dry cake – not that it actually was, phew.
In the week I was told we could expect 8-9 people, which when 2/3 of them are guests and 1/3 are their drivers, can feel a bit too few to go to all the effort for. Anyway – be careful what you wish for – as just before it I was told that the number was now 13-14, and then 15 turned up! (You’ll be glad to know that the Dog Treats pictured here did not get as far as the tea table..)
I didn’t take any pictures of them as think that’s not quite right but I will share this one of the lovely tiny little lady who is 90 and who came for the second time. Jill Dixon is her name, and she was a Hollywood actress, appearing with leading men from Laurence Olivier to Norman Wisdom!! Here’s a couple of photos of her in her heyday – and she still has stunning bone structure to this day.
It all went v well, and we offloaded some of the remnants to Henry to thank him for his chairs loan, with cake, sausage rolls and ham/pickle sarnies heading back to Ross and some of both cakes waiting for Hawksey’s return too.
A good effort from us girls – it takes all day and some prep on the Sat for just 3-5pm on the Sunday, but the guests really loved it and hurrah – no-one fell down the 6 steps!!
x