"Preparation, preparation, preparation." Chant this and all will be well, I told myself. At the first attempt I made half the recipe in case it flopped in the middle, and was delighted instead with a fluffy and light chocolate gateaux fit for the Paul Hollywood Poke. Have you noticed how he gets a finger and stabs it right in the centre of everything? I always expect the poor buns to pop under his extreme inspection technique and prayed there would be none of this aggressiveness with our cakes. And so the night before the judging I was armed with a schedule timed down to the last second and ingredients prepped and ready, I set to work after a long shift.
The longest job of any cake is greasing and lining the two cake tins and before you ask, yes I'd been out and bought new ones because my usual 20 year old Tala models with little or no Teflon left on them were not of the regulation size. Job done, I mixed the cocoa power with boiling water into paste, lobbed it into the already prepared dry ingredients and turned on the mixer. "Beat until light and creamy" it clearly states but after I'd added the eggs I sensed this wasn't quite the result Mary Berry had intended because it looked like slurry from one of the local farms. On the plus side, it smelled like heaven. So, into the oven and pacing like a new father in the maternity ward, I waited for the beast to start rising away from the bottom of the cake tin. Except it didn't. Twenty five minutes later both halves looked like large digestive biscuits. And weeping tears of frustration I tried to get one out of the tin an hour later, it broke in half like the Great African Rift Valley and oozed all over the table. There's only so much that chocolate cream icing will cover
Undefeated, I went back to Tesco at 11.00 pm and bought another stock of eggs and butter, and set the alarm. Sleep? I was so wired from the fumes of Green & Black's finest organic 70% that I'm sure I slept with my eyes open. At 6.00 am, I was standing in the kitchen before my first mug of tea thinking,
"What the flock am I doing here?" Winning. That's what. So I started again, and this time made a delightfully even confection, jammed it up with Asda apricot conserve and made bacon sarnies for Alphonse while it cooled down. Oh, we don't get treated to these every day as he's on statins but I felt really guilty of neglect somehow. After all, the dreaded cakes had cost almost as much as the weekly shop if you take the petrol into account and I was in it for the glory.
I'd timed it to perfection for 8.30 am and the journey to work. I'd even allowed for the school traffic and had battened down the cake with cling film to a silver wedding cake board. Sadly, I hadn't allowed for the speed humps by the church and, braking just a little too sharply, I sensed the top half of the sponge slide effortlessly away from the jam and land in two pieces. Make up your own swear words here, I did. Life teaches us that Plan A is of no use if you haven't got a Plan B. So I ran into the canteen, grabbed a palette knife and hoofed the two halves back together, jiggled with the topping and covered the whole lot in icing sugar because I'd brought it with me just in case. Gorgeous it looked. Good as new. When I got upstairs and presented myself, why then did the chief judge look me in the eye and say,
"Have you been eating icing sugar again Raven?"
"What?"
"Your face is covered. And you look like you've been rolling in ... well it's brown and sticky, so I'm guessing it's chocolate."
It's true. As I placed my now priceless cake in a row with sixteen others and next to the one with the company logo stencilled in edible glitter, I looked like I'd been snorting cocaine after rolling in dog poo.
Anyway, some time passed while the judging team got stuck in and I have to admire their dedication. Apparently, the four senior citizens resting in the corner later were volunteers from the Macmillan charity and deserve medals of their own for excess cake consumption. When the results came out, I'd won a certificate and joint First Prize with one of the nurses, and Sandra had bagged the certificate for a plate of excellent scones. When I got home that night clutching my bottle of fizz and a wearing a huge grin, I asked Alphonse if he's like some cake with his pack up?
"Can I have fruit instead of cake?"
"No."
"Crisps then? I've gone right off the smell of cake." Fair enough. I was feeling a bit bilious myself but my pride was at stake.
"Still NO!" On closer inspection though, the cake I'd bought for charity had started to sweat and not in a ladylike manner so I softened my resolve.
"I'll buy you lunch tomorrow then. Sushi maybe ... noodles. Anything but cake."
I was too happy to care honestly, as I'd finally broken the jinx of a lifetime and won something, and I've been high for the last week although that may be the remains of the sugar rush.
Tip of the Blog: On the day we'd raised over £700 for the Macmillan Nurses Coffee Morning, the one person who hadn't worked out the 'Bake Off' vibe was a visitor who stood at my desk asking a whole loads of irrelevant questions. I'm guessing he was bored and wanted to escape his relative's room for some human/raven contact. Eventually, he quipped,
"It's alright, you ladies can get back to your computer games now." He turned away unaware that he had awoken my inner Robert de Niro from Taxi Driver.
"Sorry. You talking to me???" I'd had a particularly testy consultant standing over me for ten minutes previously and I was in no mood.
"Oh, I know what you girls are like the minute the boss's head's turned. It's all Facebook and internet shopping." We all froze as one and turned in his direction like The Stepford Nurses.
"Facebook? At Work? Are You NUTS??" Still high on the Green & Blacks, Saab reached for a syringe and I had to be forcibly restrained from administering the Vulcan Death Grip. Pass the Green & Blacks someone.
Raven
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