- Feb 3, 2024
- LitBits
- 0
Baking day by C S Dalton Baking tomorrow’s memories
Today has been a baking day. Out of necessity, for work, but a baking day nevertheless.
A baking day? Does anyone even bother anymore? You can buy a supermarket whole iced chocolate cake for less than a take out cappuccino, after all.
Not the same though is it.
Think back, way back, to the days when baking days were a thing. Fridays in our house, when I were a kid. I’d come home from school and Mum would have made a start already. Scones, shotties (no idea whether anybody else called them that but they were a type of plain scone in our ‘ouse), a blackberry & apple pie, oozing purple goo from every carefully crimped seam, and if I was lucky, a chocolate cake. Sometimes Mum would make some extra mixture and she’d do some buns too – fairy cakes, they call ‘em nowadays.
I was allowed, encouraged even, to help from a very young age. And boy, did I love it. The alchemy of creating something so delicious from the most mundane of ingredients – flour, sugar, marg, eggs and some jam – five ingredients, all that’s needed to create that most loved of cakes, the Victoria sponge. Pure magic.
From getting out the ‘big bowl’ to the first decadent bite. A permanent haze of flour. Dad coming home, pinching the first shottie and getting told off. “They’ve just come out t’oven,” Mum would berate.
Today I’ve made parkin – a dense, treacly, oaty, ginger cake. Made with my favourite wooden spoon. Because everyone has a favourite wooden spoon, don’t they?? Or is that just me? Actually, it’s a second generation favourite wooden spoon. The old one got a split in it and was retired. Not binned. No, no, I still have it out of sentimentality, just retired.
I’m a bit early with parkin, if truth be told. It’s traditionally made in Yorkshire for Bonfire Night but I thought this weekend’s guests would love it. Though they won’t get any till the weekend because it’s one of those old fashioned cakes, like it’s cousin gingerbread, that gets better, stickier, the longer you leave it. I’ll have to try and not pinch any myself before the weekend. And that’ll be hard, not just because of my ridiculously sweet tooth but because I crave the memories too. Of Bonfire nights past. Hot Heinz tomato soup in the back garden. Writing my name with a sparkler in the frosty night air and burning a hole in my glove. Maybe a Catherine wheel if we were feeling flush, that struggled to spin, spluttering weakly but colourfully, nailed to the back fence. And a mammoth wedge of parkin, gingery, warm and unctuous, after the soup, that filled you so full, you didn’t need any tea. Clever, my Mum!
So yeah, baking day – so much greater than the sum of its parts – just like the humble Victoria sponge. Go on, go and get your big bowl and wooden spoon out and make, no, bake some memories.
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A baking day? Does anyone even bother anymore? You can buy a supermarket whole iced chocolate cake for less than a take out cappuccino, after all.
Not the same though is it.
Think back, way back, to the days when baking days were a thing. Fridays in our house, when I were a kid. I’d come home from school and Mum would have made a start already. Scones, shotties (no idea whether anybody else called them that but they were a type of plain scone in our ‘ouse), a blackberry & apple pie, oozing purple goo from every carefully crimped seam, and if I was lucky, a chocolate cake. Sometimes Mum would make some extra mixture and she’d do some buns too – fairy cakes, they call ‘em nowadays.
I was allowed, encouraged even, to help from a very young age. And boy, did I love it. The alchemy of creating something so delicious from the most mundane of ingredients – flour, sugar, marg, eggs and some jam – five ingredients, all that’s needed to create that most loved of cakes, the Victoria sponge. Pure magic.
From getting out the ‘big bowl’ to the first decadent bite. A permanent haze of flour. Dad coming home, pinching the first shottie and getting told off. “They’ve just come out t’oven,” Mum would berate.
Today I’ve made parkin – a dense, treacly, oaty, ginger cake. Made with my favourite wooden spoon. Because everyone has a favourite wooden spoon, don’t they?? Or is that just me? Actually, it’s a second generation favourite wooden spoon. The old one got a split in it and was retired. Not binned. No, no, I still have it out of sentimentality, just retired.
I’m a bit early with parkin, if truth be told. It’s traditionally made in Yorkshire for Bonfire Night but I thought this weekend’s guests would love it. Though they won’t get any till the weekend because it’s one of those old fashioned cakes, like it’s cousin gingerbread, that gets better, stickier, the longer you leave it. I’ll have to try and not pinch any myself before the weekend. And that’ll be hard, not just because of my ridiculously sweet tooth but because I crave the memories too. Of Bonfire nights past. Hot Heinz tomato soup in the back garden. Writing my name with a sparkler in the frosty night air and burning a hole in my glove. Maybe a Catherine wheel if we were feeling flush, that struggled to spin, spluttering weakly but colourfully, nailed to the back fence. And a mammoth wedge of parkin, gingery, warm and unctuous, after the soup, that filled you so full, you didn’t need any tea. Clever, my Mum!
So yeah, baking day – so much greater than the sum of its parts – just like the humble Victoria sponge. Go on, go and get your big bowl and wooden spoon out and make, no, bake some memories.
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