Let THEM Eat Cake!

Wednesday 20 November 2013

15:20

Dear Diary, today I was given a ‘Friendship Cake’.

You are no doubt thinking ‘Aw, that’s nice! What a lovely gesture!’  And no doubt you are imagining a dear little muffin or cupcake-type treat, all squishy and sweet and moist, bedecked in pink icing with ‘No.1 Chum ’ written on the top in sprinkles.  Well, if that is what you are imagining ... then your imagination is the only thing stupider than a ‘Friendship Cake’.

Because, in reality, a ‘Friendship Cake’ is a large spoonful of yeasty goo, slopped into an old ice cream tub and given to you with a detailed set of instructions on what to do next – which, rather surprisingly, is NOT ‘Chuck it in the bin and go and buy yourself a nice cake or do what everybody else does - i.e. flatter and/or whine at your mother/grandmother/other-cake-baking-relative until they make one for you’.

Yes, basically, a ‘Friendship Cake’ is a cake you have to MAKE YOURSELF! I have skimmed through the instructions and apparently there are ten... TEN... days of prep to get through first! TEN DAYS! That’s 240 hours. Or, if you’d rather, 14400 minutes of MY LIFE committed to making a cake. A BLOODY CAKE. I have never even committed to a MAN for THAT long!

Where the hell does friendship come into this, anyway?  Friendship is tactfully being told that you have the bogie from hell hanging out of your left nostril. Friendship is never having to drink alone. And friendship is being reminded on a daily basis that you are still an idiot, albeit a lovable one. Friendship IS NOT forcing someone into baking a cake in the name of friendship – THAT is passive-aggressive, flour-based TERRORISM.

I’m sorry, I am feeling quite tearful. I shall write again when I am a little more composed.

19:40

I have returned.

The ‘Friendship Cake’ is still here.

Do you know what the worst part of all this is? Wanting to chuck it in the bin and not being able to.  If I throw it away that makes ME the bad friend.  And then I would not hear the metallic ‘clunk’ of the bin lid as I disposed of it, I would hear my friend’s voice, saying ‘You threw my friendship away!’ in a choked, overly-dramatic whisper. Over and over again. No. I don’t think I could live with that. DAMN YOU, GUILTY CONSCIENCE!

I fear I am just going to have to grit my teeth and get on with it. The instructions read as follows:

HERMAN THE FRIENDSHIP CAKE

Herman is a friendship cake which you can’t buy, but you can give him away. He grows slowly but surely because of the yeast in him. It is usually 10 days before you can eat him. Herman doesn’t have to be kept in the fridge and doesn’t require a lid – just covering him with a tea towel is sufficient. Herman grows at room temperature.

If you would like to spread a little friendship follow through the instructions below and at the end of 10 days you will have a cake to eat and four starter kits to pass on.

Day 1: Today Herman is given to you. Put him in a big bowl (At least 4pt capacity). Cover Herman loosely so he can breathe. A tea towel or loose lid is ideal.

Whoa, whoa, WHOA!

It has a NAME?!  And that name is ... HERMAN?!

And what is this rubbish about not requiring a lid? Surely that can’t be hygienic? ‘Herman grows at room temperature’... yes, so does mould.

Nevertheless, I have followed the instructions. I now have one large bowl with a small puddle of fusty gloop in the bottom.

This had better be worth it.

Thursday 21 November 2013

Day 2: Stir Herman 2-3 times a day with a wooden spoon (do not use metal, and which you can leave in the bowl)

Dear Diary, the question that is keeping me awake at night is this: - just WHERE has this cake been? It is essentially a chain cake; it has literally been ‘all round the houses’.  God knows how many previous incarnations it has had; it is the cake equivalent of Dr Who.  How many kitchens has it sat in? And what were the owner’s standards of cleanliness like? They might have had the personal hygiene habits of a dung beetle with no self respect or anti-bacterial hand wash for all I know.  I read once that common house dust is predominantly made up of skin flakes, both human and animal - this cake has been sitting in untold kitchens for 10 days at a time. Loosely covered! It probably contains more dead skin than Joan Rivers’ plastic surgeon’s operating theatre. Add to that the endless possibilities of pet hair, saliva and snot particles, amongst other ghastly things, and what you actually have is not so much a ‘Friendship Cake’ as a hostile loaf of unsavoury particles. A BIG GERMY DEATH BUN!

Oh, how I long to put it in the bin. Please don’t think me ungrateful, I appreciate the spirit of the concept – it’s just that I appreciate the concept of a nice, sterile, pre-wrapped Bakewell Tart more.

Anyway, I have stirred the cake 3 times, with a wooden spoon, as bidden.

I am going to lay down for a bit as I am feeling a bit queasy now.

Friday 22 November 2013

Day 3: Stir Herman 2-3 times a day with a wooden spoon – don’t forget to talk to Herman as you stir, you don’t want him to get lonely, do you?

Dear Diary, I’m supposed to talk to it now. You have GOT to be fucking kidding me  I told it not to try anything funny and made that ‘I’m watching you’ hand gesture.

Saturday 23 November 2013

Day 4: Herman is hungry. Give him the following:-
200mls milk
200g self-raising flour
250g sugar

Dear Diary, I spent several pleasant hours today, penning letters to my ‘friend’, the benevolent giver of ‘cakes’. It turns out that I know WAY more swear words than I thought I did. My favourite part was when I pointed out that giving me a ‘Friendship Cake’ was the same as me giving them a skip full of plutonium and scrap metal parts and saying 'Here! Make a bomb – and then blow yourself up! ... You will if you're really my friend' and then suggesting, in my own, unique fashion, that they reconsider their definition of ‘friendship’.

Of course, I won’t actually be sending the letters.  I’ve used the ‘C’ word far too many times to be able to do that.

Sunday 24 November 2013

Day 5: Stir Herman 2-3 times a day – are you talking to him?

Dear Diary, is it just me, or is ‘Herman’ giving off a vague sense of empty menace?  Every time I enter the kitchen it’s like having Stephen Hawking sitting in a corner, holding a flick knife.

I tried reading to the cake while I stirred it today, but it seems quite sullen and unresponsive. Maybe ‘The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake’ was a poor choice of book? 

Monday 25 November 2013

Day 6: Stir Herman 2-3 times a day – are you talking to him?

Dear Diary, having a ‘Friendship Cake’ in the house is more exhausting than having a friend stay over with their dubious, new boyfriend. No matter how you try, you just can’t rest and have to keep finding excuses to surreptitiously check on it to make sure it’s not stealing the silverware.

Today I tried to bond with ‘Herman’ by telling him about my love life, but I caught him smirking so I called him an ‘immature prick’ and flounced off.

Tuesday 26 November 2013

Day 7: Stir Herman Dave 2-3 times a day – are you talking to him?

Dear Diary, it’s no good, I am going to have to rename the cake. To Dave. Or something. I just don’t see myself being friends with someone called ‘Herman’. ‘Dave’ is a cake you could really bond with. Whereas, you would never find yourself saying ‘Oh, poor Herman broke up with his girlfriend and needs me to go round and help him shred her belongings with a pair of scissors’.

When I suggested the name change to Herman Dave, on the grounds that ‘Herman’ sounds like someone who would wear nylon slacks, smell of tinned tuna and hold the world record for ‘greatest number of current restraining orders’, his attitude seemed decidedly snippy.

I am beginning to realise that there is no helping some cakes.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

 Day 8: Stir Herman Dave 2-3 times a day – are you talking to him?

Dear Diary, we are nearing the end now. I cannot pretend that I am not glad of this fact.  Frankly, Dave is becoming insufferable. I have resorted to amusing myself by greeting the cake in the style of Trig from Only Fools and Horses. ‘Alright, Dave?’ I say in a deadpan, South London voice.  The cake HATES this. Which, in turn, makes me very happy. 

Just like Harry and Sally, I find myself posing that ages old question:

Can cake and women be friends?*

*No

 

Thursday 28 November 2013

Day 9: Herman Dave is hungry again. Give him the same ingredients you gave him on Day 4. Stir well then divide him into 5 equal parts. Give 4 baby Hermans Daves away with a copy of this sheet. (or keep one back for yourself to grow and redistribute to other friends) Keep the 5th portion to bake.

Dear Diary, I know his time is short now, and maybe I should try to be charitable and understanding because of that... but I HATE that fucking cake!

Greedy, selfish, cake-faced bastard! If he thinks I’m having his babies – he’s got another think coming!

And anyway, having canvassed the opinions of some of my friends with regards to fostering said babies, there seems to be a consensus of ‘Are you on GLUE?’

 

So that’s that.

Friday 29 November 2013

Day 10: Herman Dave is absolutely starving. He needs a holiday. He likes to go to a hot resort. The oven is his favourite. Pre-heat oven to 170ºC (150ºC fan-assisted oven) and grease a cake tin generously. Prepare him for his holiday using  the following:-

150g self-raising flour,
100g finely chopped nuts/raisins,
200mls oil,
half teaspoon of baking powder,
3 heaped teaspoons cinnamon,
3 eggs, 2 large grated apples,
Bake in loaf tin or 9” x 9“ cake tin

Dear Diary, it is over. I fed him his last meal, made him comfortable and then reassured him that he was indeed going to a ‘hot resort’, happy in the knowledge that he would soon be toasting his nasty little raisins in the fiery belly of hell itself.  May Beelzebub enjoy every slice... and save a special place at his tea table for those ‘friends’ who don’t know the true meaning of friendship.

Of course, there are a couple of lessons to be learnt here:  

  

1) If we were meant to have ‘Friendship Cakes’ then the song would go ... ‘If I’d Known You Were Coming I’d Have Given You Some of the Base Ingredients and Guilted You Into Making a Cake’. Just try singing along to that.

2)  Friends can be total a-holes.

 

The Cake Formerly Known as Herman

 

 

 

 

****************************

Hello there!

Don’t worry, you haven’t been sitting too close to a giant marker pen with the lid off or (if you’re American) overindulged on the whole turkey/pumpkin pie thing, leading to a bad case of the meat sweat hallucinations. I am indeed back. But why?!?!?  You might be wondering, although perhaps not with quite so many exclamation and question marks.

A few days ago I was invited to take part in a bit of a blog mini renaissance by the ever-awesome Wordsx3. It turns out that I’m not the only blog slacker, there are quite a few of my contemporaries who have also allowed their blog sites to gather dust in recent months (or years, in my case – colour me thoroughly ashamed of myself) for one reason or another. Life, mostly. Over on Facebook, this had been recently posted by the ever-excellent Scope:

Head over to Scope’s blog for the full explanation, a list of the other participants with links to their posts and a rather delightful snapshot of his Thanksgiving dinner.

I miss my blog friends and what Wordsx3 referred to as ‘The golden age of blogs’, it was a really happy time for me and I always remember it with great fondness. It was with that in mind that I decided to put aside my doubts and the conviction that you should ‘never go back’, and placed my blogger bonnet firmly back on my head. It is a little faded now, a bit tatty around the edges and more than a little covered in dust. But if you look carefully, you can still see some of its fine colours, and its feather still retains a little of its original jauntiness.

Finally, if you are reading this because you either still follow me out of stalwart and steadfast loyalty or (more likely) just haven’t yet been bothered to delete me from your blogroll – then I warmly thank you. I hope you enjoyed taking this trip back into the blogosphere with me and apologise for having held your hand so uncomfortably tightly – you see, it’s been a while and I’m a little bit nervous.

G.I. x