I felt the need to trial the roulade and set out to find a regulation 33x23cm swiss roll tin in John Lewis. Shouts of "How much?" and "Fifteen quid!" could be heard throughout the Retail Cathedral as I inspected the only one on offer in the cookware department. Instead, I opted to use the battered tin I've had for a decade and scaled down the recipe according to my meagre mathematical talents. I melted the chocolate, beat eggs with sugar, made a meringue and lobbed it into the oven quite pleased with myself until I inspected my hair in the mirror. My new Next top was strafed with the dense chocolate sauce which even the Bosch loaded Vanish couldn't remove.
I was consciously un-clenching my buttocks whilst waiting for it to cool; not out of nervous tension you understand but I'd injured myself the previous week trying to dismount Betty during a rainstorm. My right gluteus maximus had gone into spasm thus giving me a soggy bottom. Still, when the chocolate confection was cool enough for its double cream filling, I thought it needed to look a little less bland so I added a molten core of blackcurrant jam from Lidl and drizzled M&S berry sauce all over the double cream before rolling it up. It looked marvellous with lots of ooze coming out of the centre. I'd already alerted Them Next Door and between us we demolished 1,000 calories before tea time with Alphonse bagging the jammy end. Sensibly, they elected to go for a five mile hike before bedtime and with hindsight, we probably should have joined them.
To raise extra cash, I'd opted to make two of Delia Smith's finest bakes; a lemon curd sponge and a ginger traybake. So, in Great British Bake Off style, I had a plan for the evening's baking activities and a Tick List, and had stupidly decided to make the roulade early and keep it in the fridge overnight. Even Mary Berry says this is okay. It is not! As part of the plan, I'd been to the pound shop and bought a special carrier, serviettes, a pink cake knife and a silver cake board for the tray bake, which Alphonse propped up on a damp tea towel. Minutes later, it had sucked up all the available moisture in the kitchen and had trebled in size. It barely fitted in the bin.
By 9.00 pm, my Tick List was going well. Lemon sponge - tick. Ginger cake - tick. Pasta for tea - erm possibly - tick. Chocolate roulade - no tick. It had spread very evenly over the shallow tin and cascaded over the top, coating the oven with goop. Still, nothing that couldn't be saved with a sharp knife and a bucket of cream, unlike the lemon sponge. After a restless night, I got up at 6.00 am for a cuppa and found Alphonse inspecting the matching lemon circles.
"Don't touch it!" I barked.
"I'm not touching it ... I'm trying to lift it." By profession, Alphonse was a Metallurgist before taking a powder and joining the Civil Service, so he knows when a mixture has gone 'out of kilter'. Granted, a huge crucible of stainless steel isn't quite on the same scale as a lemon drizzle cake but the principle is the same. It looked unusually pale, so I gave the sponge the 'Paul Hollywood finger of shame' and conceded.
"It's like concrete." Alphonse agreed.
"There's no sponge-effect going on there."
"But I used the standard six, six, six and three method plus the juice of a lemon." I'd done the maths in my head so what could go wrong? How could it go in the oven weighing just over 20 ounces and now weigh double that? Alphonse put his razor sharp beak at the centre of the problem.
"That's not cake, it's ballast!" He handed me a coffee and stalked off in the direction of the bathroom.
I dressed swiftly and with a heavy heart drove to Tesco in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. If you don't know, they do a lovely vanilla cheesecake and with some M&S mini meringues and a long squirt of lemon sauce, I transformed it into a showstopper. Yes of course I confessed to the adjudicators at work but they didn't care as long as it could be sold for charity. So I lined up my traybake, now on an old plate, and my roulade safe in its special carrier along with the others. As I undid the clips the handle snapped off and I fumbled it. Everyone watched in horror as my cake landed edge down in a soggy heap but remarkably, a dusting of icing sugar hid most of the carnage. The theatre manager looked utterly smug and pointed to his efforts on the plinth.
"I got up at five this morning to make mine." His had cherries all along the top.
"The rules say we're not supposed to add fruit to it." Had I misread the instructions?
"Soddit! It looked a bit ordinary so who cares as long as it's tasty?" In a state of shock, I went to yoga to contemplate the infinite. Apparently, I had won third prize out of three contestants, and the nurses told me it tasted great even without the blackcurrant sauce.
Tip of the Beak: By the weekend, no-one had mentioned the ginger cake. I even quizzed the Physio who was doing acupuncture on my buttock. Did anyone buy it, eat it, or had it gone in the macerator? No-one seemed to know and naturally I assumed its kick-ass, spicy taste was too hot to handle and I'd poisoned half the theatre staff, until one of the management stopped me by the first floor sluice.
"Could I have the recipe for your ginger cake Raven?" Result.
"I wondered where that went ..."
"Well I bought one slice then went back for the rest to take home. I want to make one myself ..."
I dropped my voice to a whisper as if confessing to a crime, "It's not a Mary Berry. It's a Delia Smith!" She raised an elegantly plucked eyebrow and reached over, patting me hard on the shoulder.
"You need to get out more."
She is right of course and, contrary to all rumours, I won't be entering Bake Off Series 7. Paying close attention to the emotional final episode last week, it was plain to see that Ian had lost weight since the first episode which is quite a feat considering all that fat, sugar and cream he must have consumed. Personally, I couldn't stand the stress or the clothing bills because my Next top has just followed the carrier and cake board into the bin. Lucky I didn't buy the swiss roll tin then?
Raven
