My Love-Hate Cake

I love eating this cake, and I hate that it makes me cry.

Why does it do that?

Because...

At the age of five, I was prohibited from eating it. For a brief moment, my Mum believed it was making me fat, and from that moment on, my relationship with this ubiquitously British, traditional children's sweet-treat cake, made famous by a Queen, was to become achingly bittersweet.

Once upon a time, little me, smiley Caroline Jane, who brought the sunshine in the rain, would look forward to a slice of her Mother's weekly Victoria Sandwich bake. I have the fondest memories of playing outside, running barefoot over our lush green eiderdown lawn, chasing friends and family through the long and soft tickle-tastic branches of our giant weeping willow while laughing and whooping with joy as our chase races were won and lost. My lungs would be full, and my heart would pump with quintessential English air joyously fragranced by the sweet and succulent scent of Dad's well-pruned and bountifully coloured rose borders.

"Dinner time!"

Mum would call through the kitchen window, and I would run inside, my belly rumbling, eyes wide, my appetite alive. I would plonk myself at the kitchen table and scoff, wholeheartedly, anything and everything put in front of me, ambitiously clearing my dinner plate like a good girl for the prize that was the sweet treat at the end.

Then, one day...

"Sorry, no cake this evening. We have to watch your weight. Doctors orders."

As my mother spoke, her tone warm, her eyes smiling, her fingers ruffling through my scratty mane of hair, an aura of good intention swaddling her words, above me on the kitchen counter, aloof and sanctimonious in its sugary sweetness, gloated an unobtainable Victoria Sponge Cake.

I remember protesting. I remember crying. I remember the hard line of prohibition being etched into my young psyche like a tattoo infected with a seeping sepsis of difficult questions.

Was I fat?

What made a person fat?

Was it bad to be fat?

Am I ugly because I am fat?

I didn't answer any of those questions at the time. Instead, they stayed in my head, polluting the light and fantastic breezes of my childish mind with a funk that, despite the cake prohibition lasting less than a day, led to me not eating Victoria Sponge for a very long time.

Here's the thing, though: I could have eaten it. Any day thereafter. After that tearful episode, my mother realised that the Doctor was wrong and my weight was merely puppy fat. She would have given me a piece of her light, airy, vanilla-infused, jam-sandwiched, sugary, buttery cake whenever I asked.

But I didn't ask.

Because from that day on, I didn't want it.

It was not a matter of willpower or stubbornness. No energy was invested in my conscious uncoupling with this cake. All that happened was that I walked away. The cake and I were over. I had some emotional baggage over the episode and those unanswered questions, but, on balance, it was only the same as being told off for something my brother had done, which happened every day!

Bye-bye, sweet, joyous cake that my mother liked to make.

Lessons learned. Moving on.

From then, my mother's weekly Victoria Sponge Cake bake would sit in the cake barrel on the counter, insignificant in its existential nothingness. Birthday cakes, wedding cakes, and christening cakes with that ubiquitous Victoria sponge at their hearts all came and went. I would sing, cheer, and celebrate with family and friends, uncaring that I did not want to partake in the cake that comprised the centrepiece.

It was just cake. No biggie. When asked why I wasn't eating it, I simply replied that I had gone off it.

That was until I reached my teens when my relationship with this cake took on a whole new persona. I not only started eating it now and again, but I also started baking it, caring about the ingredients that went into it and labouring over its presentation.

Why?

Standing at six feet and two inches tall and weighing only eight stone, my Dad had stopped eating and was slowly wasting away. Physically, there was nothing wrong with him. All he would say when asked why he hadn't eaten anything was that he had forgotten to.

Nobody could understand what was going on. Was he anorexic? Was there some worry that we were all unaware of? It could not simply be a matter of forgetting to eat. That, to everyone, was pretty unbelievable.

But it wasn't to me.

I knew that it was very possible to stop thinking about or wanting food. My relationship with Victoria Sponge Cake showed me that. Dad, I could see, had lost his desire not just for one type of food but for all food. It had become an emotional non-entity, a function, a job to be done that had to be ticked off a list.

When he said it was as simple as forgetting to eat, I believed him.

I could see that when reminded to eat, he would do so. Just as when he was reminded to paint the skirting boards or wallpaper a bedroom he would get on with the job in hand. But, there was no desire in play, no emotional fulfilment in any of these tasks. Eating and DIY were on the same spectrum; they were duties, not joys.

His disinterest in food was much like my relationship with Victoria Sponge. If somebody placed a piece of it on my plate at a party, I would eat it with no fuss and no drama, but I would not enjoy it, and it would be entirely forgettable.

So, in an attempt to travel down this rabbit hole of insight and empathy further, I started eating and baking Victoria Sponge Cakes. My logic was that if I could find the joy in this cake that I once felt so intensely, then perhaps I could help my dad find the pleasure in food again.

Did I figure it out?

Did my forced reconnection with Victoria Sponge help?

Well, my Dad is now in his seventies. He does eat, and occasionally, you can see that he enjoys eating. So, I guess I shall take that as a win, although I don't think it is a by-product of anything that I specifically did.

All I know is that my relationship with Victoria Sponge has changed. Like I said at the beginning, I eat it and want to cry. The taste awakens within me all these memories of love, happiness, empathy, care, and difficulty. It is a bittersweet emotional concoction.

Eating this cake is akin to listening to a piece of music that stirs the very pits of you with its melancholic rhythm and syncopated beats. It reaches into the dark corners and crevices and reminds me that inside the torture of its melancholy, there is deep and meaningful nurturing stirring. I remember with each sugary, jammie, buttery slice that I am strong, that I have built walls and then broken them down, that I can see and feel and help people through my empathetic experiences. I sense the depths of my resilience as I remember the pain and distress of my Dad's suffering and then the battle for his respite.

Now, on rainy days, when the weather streaks its tears down the window, and I look out feeling my defences bruised and battered by life, I take comfort in making this cake. It takes no more than an hour to prepare, and once done, it offers a soft pillow of vanilla-laced sponge and a bright, fruity centre juxtaposed with a generous silky-sweet layer of buttery confection.

I eat it like Queen Victoria once did, sitting in my armchair with a steaming cup of English breakfast tea and believing that, come what may, trifles like cake will never stop me from keeping calm and carrying on.

If you would like to try My Love Hate Cake, here is my tried and tested recipe:

Ingredients:

5 eggs

Same weight of the eggs in caster sugar.

230ml of unflavoured vegetable oil (not olive oil)

Two good tablespoons of natural yoghurt

A teaspoon of vanilla paste

Two cups of self-raising flour

Strawberry jam

A 250g block of unsalted butter

A 500g box of icing sugar

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180 celcius/350 F.

2. Line a 6-in-diameter, 3-in-deep round tin with grease-proof baking paper.

3. Using an electric hand whisk, mix the eggs, sugar, and oil together in a bowl until pale gold and bubbly. You want to get as much air into your mix as possible at this stage.

4. Add the yoghurt and vanilla paste and mix again.

5. Sift in the flour and fold so you don't knock out the air you have achieved from the preliminary mixing stages. The batter should hold ribbons well but will be loose. If you have to add more flour at this stage, you can. A little at a time is helpful to judge the consistency. Here is a picture to help the judgement:

6. Pour the batter into the prepared tin.

7. Bake for 30 - 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. It will look like the picture below:

8. Leave to cool in the paper on a wire rack.

9. Softly melt the butter in the microwave. You do not want it runny, just soft enough to mix.

10. Add 3/4's of the icing sugar, sifted, and whisk into a buttercream.

11. Once cooled, peel off the paper and place the baked sponge on a plate. Using a serrated bread knife, slice the cake in half, as shown below.

12. Smother the bottom half of the sponge with strawberry jam. Then, pile the prepared buttercream on top.

13. Put the top of the cake on the buttercream.

14. Use the remaining icing sugar to lightly dust the top of the sandwiched sponge.

15. Allow the whole cake to settle for a while so that the buttercream is firm in the middle when you cut it.

With love,

CJ xx