PANETTONE - ITALIAN CHRISTMAS BREAD

It’s only normal that after the oddest-ever-odd succession of Journeys to the edge of nobody’s empire, with a soundtrack of techno music and songs from your childhood, Feverishness and advice and the most sudden fear of owls, Madness, sponsored by emotional charity gone wrong under the ever so watchful eye of the Shard, and followed by Absolutely fucking nothing (topped with golden syrup, and stomach ache), Missions to the future and back, Jam on toast, toilet floors, fallen soldiers, Jamborees, the fairest sun, orphanages, Amazing adventures (or an anachronistic version of them), Sinking ships and planes to outer space, Obliteration, and Nervous breakdowns that cater for symphonies, breakfast, books, bites and warmth; it’s only normal that you find yourself in a state of sleepy, puzzled accomplishment, and you half-wonder whether all this that you managed to more or less gracefully survive was one of those Dreams that make you talk in your sleep; and whether or not you see what happens next, be it because you may be a dormant little witch with a temperance problem, or because you’ve just been given the gift of the self-proclaimed wisdom of the ages (that and snus, plus recipe books, and camera gear), you feel like you really deserve that slice of vegan panettone that is the very last, proper delicious bake of an oddest-ever-odd year; and you hope that the wisdom of the cake will work its magic just as well; for yourself, for all the cake eaters that have been sitting with you at tea time, J through to D, and, most of all, for those who still feel a little bit peckish and won’t mind sticking around for another year.

ROCKY ROAD SALAMI

When it doesn’t really matter whether changing the past was ever a real thing, you’ve got to focus on this more or less expected time of year, which turns out to be all about juggling Pexmas parties and slow-cooked death and retarded cookies and tarots, present shopping and present giving and present receiving, cake receiving and coffee receiving, and sharing, photo boothing, hair cutting and more or less extensive hair dying (yet, no flamboyaging), mulled whining and vintage weighing and recipe improvising, for cake giving; and if you stopped for half a second and looked in the mirror between each ing (or, if you were to spend four hours at the hairdresser’s sat in front of one of said mirrors), you would be astounded to find you could well be a red-haired modern-day version of Anna Karerinina because you’re smiley like that (and only worryingly less photogenic); but then again, why would you stop for even half a second, when the cross that you bear is half as heavy as you run around pushed by the cold wind, and amazing ventures and adventures await, and there’s the new best Engl-alian cake setting in the fridge, ready to be shared like your own special version of gold or frankincense or myrrh, except it’s made of Italian chocolate and English tea biscuits and a bucketload of Canadian marshmallows because you’ve got to make the most of what you’ve got, to wake that winter sun at last.

POMEGRANATE JELLY DESSERT

One may, with good reason, expect the world to stop when chocolate eating competitions in the kitchen at five in the morning, Italian cooking classes with a vegan twist, pain au chocolat engineering works and other amazing adventures to that effect abruptly cease until further notice, leaving you with a number of bruises on miscellaneous parts of your body, Hamlet’s dilemmas over your toothbrush, a smelly stuffed raccoon the size of a child as a door stop and almost socially acceptable eating habits.

However, surprisingly, New Wave songs keep playing and Italian Christmas cakes again will find their way to you and cupboards WITH FUCKALL IN IT sit untouched in the middle of the office and the world carries on turning; and just as surprisingly, you may realise that you kind of see some beauty in it, be it in the form of smiley hungry people, or tailored shopping advice, or punk department stores with breath-taking vintage ceilings and coconut cream, or Christmas presents coming all the way from China; so you don’t mind strolling along for a little while; and if you slip or stumble or don't win the lottery on the way, you’ve got a brand new Italian moka pot and two whole jars of the most delicious festive fruity dessert all to yourself; and in the unlikely event that no one else picks you up, they will; and they'll hold your hand and carry your bags and walk on with you.

MINCE MUFFINS

If I were to decide to become a part-time psychic when I grow up, I know one day I would look into a snow globe and see this time of the season, and a very pretty house in a part of town that, I’m sure, was well pretty fifty years ago; and there would be a white fluffy carpet and wooden things and bottles as candle holders (there’s got to be candles), and the inhabitants wouldn’t worry too much about leaving the heating on for a while, nor about anything that happens in the outside world for that matter; and they would be sipping hot drinks from big mugs and eating muffins, or mince pies, or both (it’s Christmas).

I don’t know all that much about warm cosy living rooms in Victorian houses or carpets or nice décor, but if I were them, I really wouldn’t complain about such a great selection of Christmas treats; and until I take the leap and become Head of Extrasensory Perception or that season comes and so the snow, I’ll stick to mince muffins and I know I’ll be gold.

ESPRESSO SWIRL BISCUITS

There’s a time for drama, anger, deafening rants, unkindness, hacking (or murder); for making soap-opera scenes on a busy street at lunch time in the presence of a coachload of elderly tourists from Shropshire; for judging books by their cover, being scared and selecting your new self-destruction method of choice.

But I want this to be that time when the sky splits and rain pours down on one side of the office only; a time for looking out for bells when they ring, for having no direction and following your own feet, for finding strength, for tattoos you can't hide, for trying, for acceptance, for more or less feeling less incomplete; and for all those things that come about that spiral and twist and swirl and make your head spin but then one day just surpisingly fall into place.

ORANGE LIQUEUR CHOCOLATE CAKE

For the highly praised column, CAKES FOR DAVES
and in the very special occasion of Dave (my fave)'s birthday which is today, not tomorrow. Today:

MOST HAPPIEST BIRTHDAY

I like you more than biscuit spread

& I hope you never ever drown

☀☀☀☀❤☀

WHITE CHOCOLATE BISCOFF BARS

Urban legends have it that I tend to opt for the easy way out and hide and avoid and deny and forget and more or less gracefully dodge bullets and steer away from sticky situations (unless it’s bubble-gum-flavour-ice-lolly sticky situations. In which particular case, I’m game) and my abilities as a most talented escape artist have been reported on on numerous occasions.

In my defense, the quiet (or, nothingness) after the madness pompously rolled out the red carpet for my head to wave goodbye to reality and set sail for dreams; and for this very reason dreaded deadly blood tests at seven in the morning have resulted in robotic I-have-convinced-myself-I-am-still-asleep-and-that’s-not-really-a-needle type behaviours that cause slight perplexity in hospitals; post-delivery client amends with a deadline of yesterday in mystical tales of guardian angels named Shane; and mooncake moulds missing in action and monthly expeditions to the strip and one birthday cake training session too many (however: I am so loved) in the creation of chocolate & biscuit spread bars that take less than one German experimental music album to whip up and if they didn’t dramatically worsen biscuit spread addiction and cause fatness and a spotty face you would think they are a gift from the empyrean because they’re delicious like that.

Now before I make my easy way out of this too, to go stuff myself with biscuit spread bars, I wish to share with posterity one last pearl of wisdom: the easy way out and white chocolate Biscoff bars is better than no way out and no white chocolate Biscoff bars.

TOTTENHAM CAKE

No cake on commission has in the history of this world, or another, ever been as accurately timely and fit for purpose as Tottenham Cake.

It’s only an insignificant detail that I am located a whole eleven and a half miles away from Tottenham and, even though it would be a wonderfully creative thing to do, I don’t plan on re-branding this as Peckham Cake or Warwick Gardens Cake and selling it for one penny per square at Rye Lane Market (I do it for the glory); or that I may or may not have had to find a vegan way around an upsetting amount of eggs called for in the original recipe and more or less liberally replaced obscure ingredients such as mulberry juice with inferior modern-day placeholders that go under the name of Ribena (sorry Friends); because as I found myself floating right in the middle of another teacup of stormy weather (I’m only small you see) and managed not to turn into a cute, or trendy, version of a muse of Millais’s in the very unpleasant process of splashing from one shore through to the other, it’s only with the most-childish-ever-childish children’s cake that I can pay adequate tribute to all those not-so-grown-up things that have been swimming quietly beside me easing the pain.

So one square of my Tottenham Cake goes to having cake for dinner and sometimes lunch and sometimes both; one goes to dinosaur parks; one to stuffed toys (and having a higher opinion of them than humans); one to drawing badgers; one to running around the office like a squirrel on acid; one to Christmas; one to buying useless things because there’s a bear on the packaging and it’s wearing a sailor outfit; one to choosing birthday cards three months in advance; one to crying; one to touching everything; one to baby teeth, flowery dresses, drooly dogs, hair bows, lollies; and one to my dear, dear Orphanage, that since that one sunny Saturday afternoon has been my refuge and burrow and baking laboratory and realm and source of a thousand stories, and a Little Match Girl who’s run away from home really couldn’t live anywhere else.

And if there’s a baker’s-dozen-th piece of my Tottenham Cake, I’d like to have it; because, over Troubador’s and black cabs and members clubs and conference calls and Boys Who also Never Grew Up, I’ll be happy to pick a square of sugary sponge cake covered in pink icing.

PARKIN - YORKSHIRE GINGERBREAD CAKE

When you greatly dislike black treacle and have a moderate-to-high aversion to ginger you just have to question what you are doing with you life and why it is exactly that you sit on the kitchen floor for an hour and a half on a school night with your eyelids dying to call it a day and stare blankly at the oven waiting for a boatload of gingerbread cake to slowly take its shape (and that’s without even taking into consideration a prequel of flapjack incidents and ingredient crises and creativity crises and identity crises, the prospect of a cooling time a stone’s throw to eternity, four entire moons before you even get to slice the thing – it’s got to be STICKY, and the sudden urge to sack it all off and never mind the tooth decay, peacefully suck on the container of golden syrup that is invitingly sitting in front of you like you do on a baby’s bottle).

I don’t think I can find an answer to these questions and I most definitely don’t need a slab of vegan Parkin to come to the conclusion that I don’t know what I’m doing with my life; but what I do know is that as soon as I munched my way through the first of one too many squares of this soft spongy cake, this revelation made its sticky way to me – that catastrophes are source of the best stories; that solitude leads to adventures, bear-shaped brioche buns and good night’s sleep; that nine-to-five jobs cater for sunshiny Daves and little lions (and sponsor phone calls to them), and film cameras for lifetime accomplices; and that if you tie yourself to someone’s balloon and let it go, just before it bursts you get to touch the clouds and they feel like candy floss. And that, if from horrid treacle and soapy ginger comes heavenly Parkin, there’s got to be room for hope.

CINNAMON CHESTNUT SWIRL BREAD

If this specific semi-conscious portion of my brain that has been misbehaving since my return from outer space could be accessed by means of a Welcome10 (or if I hadn't said no to fun and hacking tutorials), I would no doubt log in and schedule one of those universally dreaded Outlook-style reminder windows to pop up in my head, accompanied by a force-twelve ear-splitting alarm bell and re-occurring until further notice, to read in monster font size: YOU ARE IN CANADA NO MORE; as behaviours such as spending evenings in basements attempting to scan aerial shots of Vancouver in life size, travelling North of the river (!) to acquire pumpkin spice latte and sweet potatoes and pumpkin miso soup, purchasing maple water and pumpkin beer, trying to replicate recipes of every single food item I consumed during my nine-day Canada trip, pouring half a liter of maple syrup into my maple tea that I will exclusively drink out of my Vancouver mug, unconsciously adopting the American spelling, being upset about the availability of Jamaican cream soda only (it’s not the same. Not the same), and starting the overwhelming majority of my conversation exchanges with overexcited when-I-was-in-Canada’s cannot be deemed appropriate or well judged.

One day, I’m sure, I will finally come to terms with the actuality that all is left of my trip is an inhuman amount of tea, a still very spotty face, and photos with one light leak too many; and in fact, you’ll be relieved to know that I have already been working on re-directing these escapist tendencies of mine to 1. fictional worlds, going on solitary day trips to admire Victorian stone sculptures of extinct animals as it would make a very adventurous chapter in an imaginary book that would have the coolest cover and would be titled ‘Amongst The Dinosaurs of Crystal Palace’; and for the sake of sanity and social acceptance 2. other places on this very planet, booking stupidly expensive flights to Italy and going on a Chinese mooncake ingredient hunt, being mistaken for a Swede (and taking it as a compliment and appreciating the importance of capitalisation), working on the perfect vegan Yorskhire parkin for Bonfire Night, and last but not least seeking baking inspiration in Australian food magazines (which I was given in Canada but don’t tell anyone). And it is the latter, ladies and gentlemen, that brings me here today with a recipe for the best sticky fluffy swirly cinnamony tea-time bread with the creamiest chestnut and walnut filling (and only a negligible amount of maple syrup, leave me alone) you can possibly find this side of the pond or the other.

I’ll let you know how I get on with my pursuit of a cure for Canada-lessness (or hacking lessons, and mental health), but for right now rest assured that I’ll be all content with my delicious swirly bread, because who wouldn’t be, eh?

WHITE BEAN PECAN PUMPKIN BLONDIES

Some people can add to other people’s life like that, and bring gifts of photos of tiny kittens and rules of thirds and cool cameras (and, fix broken ones), or secret phone numbers and nuts for dinner and Egyptian bracelets and painful fashion advice, or puns and phone calls and carefully selected vegan ham-flavoured crisps, or the biggest smiles and fobs and doughnuts, or loud laughs, badly edited pictures of honey badgers, fancy iPhones and second-hand flirting, German experimental music playlists, Belle and Sebastian, instant email responses, birthday cards, tailored guidance on London boroughs (as night follows day wPeckhamwsavesw), haircuts worth four hundred bus rides, take-care's, espressos, inexplicable exceptions to the rule of never being touched, books that were meant for someone else, unrealistic tales of North-American wildlife, bags-for-life, thermals, sleeping pills, good-night’s; or (but you’ve got to be lucky like I am), even all of the above.

Now whether all these riches are deserved or not, or if I’d rather give things away than lose them, or again if I myself only am the bearer of utter annihilation (fine, of stuffed killer whales also; but only if you’re David Wilson), however consciously hidden behind a mask of cuteness, quirkiness and puppy eyes, it’s an entire different story; because today, on Matt’s birthday, cake is the only thing that I choose to bring along.

Adding fudgy pecan pumpkin blondies to someone’s life really can’t be a bad thing; plus when you and your cake tin are almost squeezed to death on your crammed bus to work, there’s just no room for all the bullshit.
Aaaand many more.

ROOT BEER CREAM PIE

When it feels like everything’s a ceiling and you wish you could spend every single day of the next at least eleven years of your life hanging out in the sun in a café on Fraser Street eating vegan cheesecake and sipping cream soda (although caffè & panettone with James is also fine):

ROOT BEER MARSHMALLOW FLUFF PIE.

MATRIMONIAL CAKE - CANADIAN DATE SQUARES

My return to Bad City left me with some serious time-and-space-perception issues, a heavy suitcase to carry without someone's help and this feeling of my brain being all wrapped up in cotton, like the one you find inside Canadian pill bottles (and it might in fact be there for the same exact reason that is, Google and common sense enlighten me, preventing breakage).
In the twilight of my return (the afterglow of sunset, or the first dim light of the morning, I wouldn't know. I am having breakfast for lunch, dinner and actual breakfast until I work out which is which), what I came back to find is that, be it in Bad City or by the breath-taking cliffs of the Pacific coast or along the sunniest Victoria bay or looking out the hotel window with the best Lost-in-Translation view of Vancouver, the heaviest thing you can possibly carry around in your suitcase is your mind.
What I also found, is that friendly drooly hairy cuddly mastiffs and marzipan tea and gallons and gallons of vanilla extract (like bringing back a litre of maple syrup doesn't also make me cry with joy) and Mickey Mouse plasters and Oreo crumbs and pumpkin-shaped candles and lovely lovely people who feed you oatmeal (and hug you), and hanging out by Police Museums and mortuaries and tiny art galleries on your birthday and drinking Shirley Temples at grown-up bars and vegan cupcakes and vegan cinnamon rolls (one too many) and vegan chocolate marshmallow pies and vegan Sailor Jerry Coke floats at Twin Peaks themed pubs and vegan everything and cream soda and root beer and Chinese gardens and red bean bubble tea and sushi at nutcase Japanese restaurants and being suspicious towards brown shoes and hated on by the raw vegans and searched by airport security for transporting life-size Mexican skulls in your hand bag; all this, and in fact more, makes it painless enough to carry all that weight down the escalators and on the tube for ages and finally all the way up two flights of stairs back home.
If at that point you also realise that your heart (and your brand new uber-cool hand-crafted birthday bag) doesn't feel all that heavy after all, head out again - you can be the bearer of gifts and snus and hang out at the Persian cafe and have your dates (I see a pattern there).
Now, we are soon to find out whether there will be any photographic evidence of all the aforementioned beauty I've seen (an excessive amount of tears has been shed already, not to worry) and it looks like there's not going to be any wedding taking place any time soon, soz for the ironic and/or misleading recipe theme. But you will still be all ready to make your own version of Matrimonial Cake, because it's mind-liftingly and heart-liftingly and suitcase-liftingly delicious like very few other things on this planet.
To celebrate Canada, and my success in carrying my heavy suitcase all the way there and back.

FIG GINGER NUT CHEESECAKE

It’s good practice to write handover notes when you leave for a more or less significant period of time, even when flying eight hours behind and then back feels like you’ll only be gone for the night, and when the state of you in the limbo of the pre-departure is not too dissimilar to when you pour a cheesecake mixture into the tin before going to bed and think, duck knows if this will ever set.

To those who are left to spend the night time all by themselves in my absence (and to stare at the fridge like lunatics), I wish to pass on the following words of wisdom.
:

- If the thing doesn’t set, you can always have fig soup. Or just accept it’s a disaster (there’s beauty in every stumble), and start a baking blog about cheesecake disasters. It might take off, James says.

- Write stuff. If you’re too shy, invisible-write stuff.

- Masquerades are a necessary evil, but that doesn’t justify dressing up for the best part of twenty-five years just because it so happened that you forgot to take your costume off (you got there eventually).

- Royal Mail may also be a necessary evil, but even when they get confused and send your Italian dad’s parcel off to India (I’m known for not holding grudges), it doesn’t mean you are authorised to disrupt the continuum of space and time on the entire office floor shrieking like a banshee at customer service employees.

- Escape as and when deemed needed, but make sure you reserve every bit of your anxiety for what you’re escaping to.

- Foxes are underrated. Walk with them.

- Sit in cafes with the most serious expression in your repertoire and type on your laptop with the solemnity of manner you’d have when applying for a programme manager job. No one needs to know you are secretly creating cute animations out of hand-drawn badgers, photos of Birmingham and vintage trumpets.

- Five-storey buildings with a sinking-ship feel are not suitable for the emotionally unstable. Stick to orphanages, cafes in art galleries, edit suites and coffee shops that sell custard tarts whenever possible.

- Winter is cold. Summer can also be cold. Sometimes there is no summer. Wear jumpers; allow yourself to be hugged. This will keep you warm.

- Eat fried plantain, appreciate double entendres, and try not to demolish Persian cafes with your outstanding gracefulness, as this may result in getting banned from Peckham and sent back the other side of the river in eternal exile.

- Work is a sentence.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. Most times you wish they didn’t. But they can make for nice stories. Have your notebook ready.

- Things fall from the sky onto your head. And right into place after that. Be astounded, smile.

:

It would be nice if this was finally my journey to the end of the night; and if that’s the case for you, and someone’s enlightened notes help you make it through to the morning (even if it’s the darkest, rainiest Monday morning and your eyes are all puffy), you may also wake up to find that the cheesecake you made has set during the night.

That officially gives you the right to this wonderful thing known as, cake for breakfast; and it’s a sign that not all is lost.

I may be back in time for a slice, but bye for now.

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF

JAMES & ME

act II

'symphonies'

GOLDEN OREO BANANA PUDDING

There should be a master Process Document in place, which states that Oreo desserts like this are a skeleton key to escape mazes of rainy days, sad songs in loop, Dave-lessness, Dom-lessness, and old habits (the bad ones).

It’s been covered at length already that Oreos are the food of gods; they constitute a perfectly acceptable dinner party gift (if accompanied by banana bread beer) and there’s absolutely no evidence to date that they will not make you part-divine. As for the golden side of it, I woke up one morning knowing that opulence is not for me (I’m a dolphin after all); but you’ve got to be grateful for the yearly availability of special edition biscuits, even when this means dealing more or less maturely with this worrying tendency of theirs to go all sold-out in half a second (like I even give a duck now, because did you know, Morrisons: CANADA). And when a five-storey office space makes it so difficult to be a freegan and feast to your heart’s content on beetroot crisps, lemon sweets and over-ripe fruit, the addition of bananas is simply a legal requirement.

It’s soon to be disclosed whether I shall be the chosen that gets to write a Document so crucial for the whole of humanity (or perhaps just me. If so, may I please add: a slot in the diary of a busy working professional and part-time choir singer. Vegan banana cake. Art galleries. Animation tutorials. Vegan banana cake in art galleries after animation tutorials. Blue eyes, and the fine art of making peace with them), and in the meantime, I’m reminded that sunny days and disco music and shiny happy people don’t necessarily make for good stories, and most definitely don’t turn Oreos into gold.

PEANUT PUMPKIN CREAM BISCUITS

It’s ever so tiring to play the part of the child prodigy for half a week and to dress up in rotation in all the different best versions of yourself that people kindly plan on turning you into (it must be on the top 5 list of mankind’s charity goals for 2015); especially when you have since the very start taken an oath to not wear leggings as trousers in the outside world, thanks for trying, and the only thing you can possibly share with Kim Kardashian is olaplex, because your hairdresser Sam is a star like that.

In such cases, the recommended course of action is as follows:

1) do pick one of these bragged-about best-version onesies to try on, even if it’s just in the fitting room. You’ll know which one you like best when it’s a smiley one (and when someone sings a song and you can sing along cause you remember the lyrics from your childhood);

2) partake in this special-child pantomime, fine; but only if you are rewarded with couscous, sticks of rock, peanuts and/or other types of valuable goods.

This point is least painful to follow if there is some sort of vague evidence of you actually being all prodigious like that – perhaps a metaphysical entity called Ninety-Nine Jam Jars; or just James;

which leads us to point number three:

3) keep writing humourous handover notes at work, as someone may read them on the train home and secretly smile; speak Italian; daydream about Canadian raw vegan restaurants and shoe shops between a sales training PowerPoint slide and the next; jump on a bus to Hackney like the old times just to get hold of a pack of peanut flour, to go join the other forty-five types of flour you already have in your cupboard (this also means you’re entitled to cake for dinner, and a decaf-almond-milk-latte-please, and some puzzled looks from the barista); sip coffee in the park and talk about dolphins whilst people dismantle the office; and bake. Bake some peanut pumpkin cream sandwich biscuits, because you woke up one morning to find that autumn was there, and got all inspired by a place you can’t wait to visit. They will also provide you with all the energy you need to make your best prodigy child impression. Tried and tested.

ANPAN - JAPANESE RED BEAN BUNS

My baking destination of choice this week just had to be Japan, and as I wait for a Reykjavik guide book to be delivered to the office (if they don’t knock it down before then) and secretly, or not-so-secretly, go back over my steps and stare in a mixture of shock and excitement at tickets for a plane that instead will take me half a world away in under three weeks’ time, I kind of see a pattern there.

This time, your favourite escape (and bake) artist (that would be myself. Hi) is sharing a recipe for some fluffy vegan Japanese bread buns that are filled with sweet red bean paste, and do not contain any traces of maple syrup, dates (that’s probably for the best), nor Atlantic halibut (definitely for the best).

Two mouthfuls and you can forget other people's sinking ships and perhaps also your ones, and let your compass (head?) spin again for a little while.

LIQUORICE BAKED DOUGHNUTS

The Book of Cake is the book I should have written in the past two weeks or so as I was once again unconsciously sliding my way to self-sabotage, one mouthful of fried plantain at a time, and it should have been a sacred book with an austere but not too daunting cover and vintage-looking brownish pages because we have decided that’s in fashion this season (even in the UK), and you would find it inside drawers in bed side tables in hotel rooms.

In this book of cake, it is written that it’s completely fine to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown as you spot a metaphor being translated into a simile in a learning session guide in Brazilian Portuguese and to take a day off work just so that you can go for lunch with someone from work and so is to burst into tears right in the middle of Regent Street on a Sunday afternoon because you’ll be turning thirty in a second but your mum and dad still sponsor all your clothes and drain unblockers and maple syrup; because The Book of Cake suggests that whatever happens, you eventually get a grip and bake your life away and make those liquorice doughnuts that you had decided to bake on that one night out with the other two musketeers; and put to good use the precious liquorice root powder that your mamma hunted down for you in Italy (and chocolate. There’s got to be chocolate); and why not, consider patenting and marketing them as ‘Pontefract Doughnuts’ or ‘Rough Doughnuts’ or ‘David (Francis Wilson) Doughnuts’, as they may well make you rich and famous and people would want to own a 1% share of your baking business.

What The Book of Cake in essence teaches you, is that sometimes you’ve got to allow yourself to help and be helped; to take two lemon sweets from the meeting room (one for Dave); to let the boys wait in an orderly queue, although not for unreasonably long; to pay bills and use vouchers; to treat someone with overpriced organic pizza squares; to be treated with Indian samosas, lunch-packed especially for your cab ride home; and to make cake for people that are all special like that and may not even realise it; because as it turns out, sometimes you can be quite difficult to read, kind of like a book that was never written.

The Book of Cake was also never written (neither was The Book of James for that matter), but if it ever will be, the very last verses would read something very pregnant and introspective, such as, 
‘Create a little bit of havoc
but then make cake
share it with loved ones
and go fix your stupid head’.
Amen.

PEANUT MUDDY BUDDIES

Life sometimes assumes the form of a weird tragicomedy in multiple acts, one of those ones where the characters are impeccably dressed but wear funny shoes and constantly use puns and say the word amazing one time too many and compliment each other’s hair (not yours).

In cases like this, it may happen that you more or less suddenly just lose the plot.

Whether this is irreversible or not, it’s too early to say; but warning signs in no particular order include having three-and-a-half-hour motion graphics tutorials on Thursday nights to learn how to bring into existence videos of hand-drawn badgers performing an eternal dance on the screen of an anachronistic Victorian cinema, saving them as looping GIFs named ‘badgerLove5’ (it did take 5 attempts. After Effects wouldn’t accept the fact that it had to be forever), and finally publishing them on a vegan baking blog because it makes perfect sense to feature a dancing badger called James side by side with ninety-one respectable recipes of egg-and-dairy-free cake (fine, no honey either); also going food shopping for the week and coming back with two monster jars of peanut butter, a pack of gum and a box of cereal; and spending sunny Saturday afternoons handcrafting heart-shaped peanut butter chips from cocoa butter because who gives a duck about having a pool.

But then again, when the aforementioned jars of peanut butter and the aforementioned box of cereal and last but not least the homemade peanut butter chips with an embarrassing shape are finally put to good use (on a sunny Sunday afternoon) and they turn into some badass nutty Muddy Buddies, you just end up munching on them peacefully sitting on your sofa and secretly imagine their name being pronounced condescendingly with an upper middle class accent, and you also come to the conclusion that after all you don’t really mind having lost the plot, if this means that you get to write your own new one, where at this one unforeseen point in the story two people wake to find each other on the very same page.

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF

JAMES & ME

act I

BLACK BEAN CHOCOLATE CAKE

A cake for that one time I stopped drawing because I was filling paper with weird shapes and not trees and the sun and the birds; for the novel I wrote when I was eight; for the most terrible nightmares of snakes and monsters (and for waking up from them on command); for the curliest hair; for not listening to my mum; for having thought for half a second that someone who undervalues invisibility could be a better version of me; a cake for master plans and for not having one; for making someone coffee without a reason, for things that happen in due course, for illusions, robots, badgers, business cards, birthday cards, ellipses.

A cake for James and me.

APRICOT SANDWICH CAKE

When you find yourself sliding more or less gracefully along a path consisting of new flats, new working-week catastrophes, new friends and new definitely-not-friends, new routes home through the park (or around it, when it’s dark), new and annoyingly smaller Clippers, new (?) bastions of human progress that go under the name of gift cards, new accents, new motion graphics teachers at the University of Life (please, if that’s ok), new pens and candle holders, and new perspectives on what is real and what is not; when all this happens, you have to stop for a minute and take time to celebrate an old ally. Who, in fact, today gets even older (but we don’t mind because we like him greatly). With a double-decker apricot cake all frosted up and covered in dinosaur sprinkles and popping candy, because that's how we roll. Haaappaay Birthday Adam.

GLUTEN-FREE RED VELVET MUG CAKE

The weather changes and you try and prepare for the rain to pour down heavy and it’s true that you didn’t have the time to even think about taking your swimsuit out before the November (!) cold and rain suddenly decided to ruin all your bathing and sunbathing plans for the summer. However you are also left with an oversized mug and a pack of gluten-free flour that made the cut when you moved your belongings one side of town to the other and a microwave. This means you can have your very own individual portion of cake that’s ready in 5 minutes and sit on the sofa dreaming about your new projector that is on its way to you, and almost get to grips with the fact that people know you or that it has to be that one Overground line to be broken this weekend or that you suffer from severe David Wilson withdrawal symptoms or that there’s a confusing amount of gas metres on this planet or again that Outlook is evil and so is the world in general, but it’s fine because after all, RED VELVET MUG CAKE.

蛋撻 - HONG KONG TARTS

Sometimes you stick to your decisions and bake some greatly anticipated Hong Kong egg(less) tarts for KT's Cake Wednesday at the office; but some other times you change your mind or allow yourself to make exceptions or apply for train ticket refunds or cancel plans or abort missions or all of the above.

Either way, risks may or may not include the loudest fire alarms going off for ten long minutes and getting kicked out of your flat on your third day there, your baked goods tasting alright, not owning a laptop charger ever again, throwing a great amount of pounds sterling down the drain, black eyes, drama and general hatred, not being invited for dinner and no chance in the universe of un-rendering what you have decided to render.

But when life is too short for Nescafe (although it's never too short to make your own pastry), what you have to do is assemble all your troops, get hold of the biggest Moka pot you can find and have a bite of risk on toast for breakfast. 
All in due course, that is.

ORANGE & CINNAMON ICE CREAM

Orange and cinnamon is a big thing in Morocco.

In the past three days I packed three years of my life, put them onto the biggest van, took them up two flights of stairs (someone helped me), and even found some spare time to make friends with foxes.

I am currently in the seemingly never ending process of unpacking said belongings and I would kind of need another holiday in Morocco after that, together with a whole plantation of oranges sprinkled with cinnamon to recover my energy.

But just in case that doesn’t happen and I find myself at Ikea instead or running around looking for Blu Tack or recycling bags or my sanity, or at The Park, here’s some Moroccan inspired vegan orange and cinnamon ice cream. I heard it’s best served by the swimming pool.

RASPBERRY LIME DRIZZLE CAKE

The extremely engaging tale behind this week’s cake that I’m very unsurprisingly writing whilst falling asleep on my keyboard begins when you find yourself signing a lease for a flat an impressive amount of Overground stops away from where you’ve spent over seven hundred and thirty days of your existence.

Now it so happens that my occupation in the past couple of months has switched from that of full-time hermit to head of the wild puppy and trouble making department, which implies spending Saturday mornings staring at the empty space at local cafes that go under the name of Healthy Stuff, and filling yourself spherical with the aforementioned healthy stuff in an attempt to readjust brain functionality levels and regain a human appearance (and arguably sometimes failing).

Moving the other side of London sadly leaves me healthy stuff-less, and the vegan berry lime drizzle cake that has multiple times saved me from irreversibly turning into a zombie will be greatly missed.

So here’s my own version of it, if there’ll ever be a Saturday-morning-after-the-Friday-night when I’ll wake up all emotional for having run away from North East London; but also to salute the coolest little flat in the coolest former Victorian orphanage and a microwave and a sofa and three (three!) windows, and don’t hate you all, a heated Olympic-size swimming pool in the back garden, and a part of town that looks like an even better version of my dear Bushwick, just with the added bonus of an arcade bar and a much higher quantity per capita of plantain sellers; and to officially say, good night Dalston & good morning Peckham.

BLUEBERRY & CARDAMOM MUFFINS

A bit of blue like the painted wooden doors and tiled floors in Essaouira last week; like my dress and the boats and the sea; then the same subtle scent of spice as the tea we drank sitting in the Persian café on Peckham High Street before I left.

And if the above counts as dwelling on the past again (someone did tell me once that I do that a lot), then let these sweet summery muffins also speak of the blue of the water in swimming pools in back gardens, and of river valleys in far away places I want to visit; and of every cup of cardamom tea we will drink, at the café or our desk or my old flat or the new one or yours that I’ve yet to see; and of more new colours and more new smells and of new beginnings.

PEACH TEA COOKIES

When your loud mind is kept quiet by late night cab rides and origami in toilets and voices and friendly smiles, it does seem like the sky has opened up for a moment, and a light hits the skyscrapers and the rooftops and your skin and the City looks all pretty and shiny below your feet. But when midnight comes again and reality falls right onto your head from four metres high, the only companion you’re left with is a face so tired and puffy that you could cause criminal offence by the way you look; along with a concerning amount of broken things to fix. It’s only then that you finally realise you’ve got to take your usual crammed bus home and hang your head in shame, have porridge for dinner and employ what’s left of your strength to dig out that recipe you came up with during that part of your life when you were crossing paths with a part-time cookie monster and full-time ally. And even though there’s a high chance of your face being painful to look at for quite some time still, sitting together eating tinned fruit salad and sipping Turkish bottled water and munching peach tea cookies makes you feel like things are a little bit less broken already.

MELONPAN - JAPANESE BISCUIT BUNS

You know it’s time to make Melonpan when your Japan guidebook has been collecting dust on a shelf for almost a year, but still you can’t wait to print out yours and your daddy’s tickets to Morocco this week. And never mind the nosebleeds, David Wilson falls from the sky to improve your life like jam on toast.

Don’t ever tell him I said that.

And when Alex and Lauren and I sit on the steps on our lunch break with tired and crumpled faces like a punk version of the three musketeers. Or when your new mission in life becomes giving Cake Wednesday a Chinese twist.

But also when you think your heart is going to burst from sorrow and guilt (although someone’s there with you this time), and when you just don’t know whether you’ll be flying half a world away in a couple of months.

Because it turns out that sometimes (but only sometimes) change isn’t so terrifying, and it’s nice to sit in your (not for long) flat munching vegan sweet buns with a biscuity crust until you finally allow the seasons to turn.

CARROT CAKE

For Dom,

Happy Birthday

NANAIMO BARS

To try and lift up the London fog.

STRAWBERRIES & CREAM CHEESECAKE

I really should start writing an autobiographical pocket novel called ‘The unbearable loneliness of a being on bank holiday weekends’ or ‘Izzy’s day out’ or ‘I should have stayed at home’ and the story would go like this. One weekend someone doesn’t have time in their life for vegan cake, and another obviously less antisocial individual escapes to mainland Europe for coffee leaving you all alone staring at the ceiling of your tiny tiny studio flat in a part of town that’s suddenly turned into something too trendy for your run-away-from-home self to hang out unaccompanied by a freelance jewellery designer husband and a toddler. But not all is lost. Never mind washing your hair (it adds to the charm), you jump on a train to dear Peckham, where people’s main concern appears to be the price of plantains and you can wander around middle Eastern bargain stores that resemble Narnia and art galleries and take photos of songbirds in alleys and sit in cafés sipping rhubarb tea and writing postcards to worried parents who now label you as bohemian, then go back home with a new-found quite concerning feeling of belonging, a bag of blackcurrant sweets and twelve hundred grams of strawberries for your (almost) raw vegan cheesecake because as it turns out, you are one of those people who do have time in their life for vegan cake and I fail at seeing anything wrong with that.

The end.

MANGO SORBET WITH CHOCOLATE

Spring really should sort itself out and shut the doors to winter once and for all, like the Stalinist Russian regime that rules my brain shuts tries but miserably fails to shut the doors to people who never opened theirs to me. But whether you too are a miserable Londoner who struggles to enjoy ten minutes of warmth and sun per day, or you live in a normal place where seasons are a thing, you can still relish some delicious raw fruity sorbet with a crunchy dark chocolate topping. It’s ready in an instant and provides instant peace for your tummy and soul, and who gives half a duck about doors or seasons or wastage of feelings after all.

QUINOA CAROB MUFFINS

Superfood muffins come to a very good use when you go clubbing on a Monday night and miss your last train to Hogwarts or when the cursed and blessed open road that people call life makes you emotionally unstable and incapable of deciding whether you want to spend the rest of your life in a Scottish mansion with a view or in a studio flat in Peckham that very closely resembles a bunker from the Great War. In fact, they are so good you can munch on them without really worrying about TV cables or overworked Chinese project managers or falling asleep on your keyboard at work or work in general or dressing appropriately or again being overqualified for relationships. There’s the wonders of quinoa carob muffins for you.

GOJI BERRY COCONUT CAKE

It’s during long dark weeks like this that your mind suddenly decides to sack reality off and bolts out to places where you can wear clogs every day without socks and you can cycle around without hitting cars nor having to go to work and where people first allow each other to hug and be hugged and then months after that they meet.

It is very unfortunate however that we also have a body (no matter how full of mucus and disgusting it may be) and you will find that they are incredibly more difficult to reposition than minds. In fact, my one is stuck in a very cold windy environment and it’s not coping well (see under mucus and disgustingness), plus it really doesn’t help that Pret’s gingerbread men there are not vegan and can’t be shared.

Thankfully, in this very same environment you can find goji berries and coconut and vegan cake, and a combination of the above makes it so worth it to tell your thoughts and dreams to resign. It worked a treat for me (ha), you let me know.

APPLE BUCKWHEAT CAKE

Getting ill on weekends seems to be my favourite thing to do in the world, and when you don’t have any sort of contact with human beings of any sort for three and a half days, and you stay all curled up in bed like an amoeba for three and a half days, then it’s quite understandable that you kind of wish you were home where caring human beings feed you ice cream and you don’t have to go out to buy carrots with a fever and toilet paper and that sort of things. So now that I am apparently succeeding in defeating disease, I gathered all the strength I had left (just enough to grate an apple to be precise) and baked something kind of home-related. Buckwheat flour is very common where I’m from in Northern Italy so here’s a buckwheat flour cake. It’s very light and moist because of the apple and apple puree and it’s usually served with a redcurrant or blueberry or raspberry jam filling. Now I am known for being a fan of sweet chocolateyness so to the redcurrant jam I added some chocolate filling. Sorry Italian food police. This is so good and sticky and chocolatey.

LEMON LOLLIES

I try really hard to be a blank slate, and to not let this mystical thing that may go under the name of creativity take the first bus out of here, which leads me to look into purchasing packs of special Oreos off the internet for the price of a month's rent (why, America, why did you have to be too cool for us) and seven hundred and fifty grams of cashew nuts at the supermarket, and to actually buy comic books that only Little Match Girls would read, and last but not least to entertain myself in the fine art of producing confectionery. At least one can put their sugar thermometers to good use and suck lollies like one sucks carrots (exactly), to forget for a moment that there's way too much love to go around these days.

APPLE & BLACKBERRY CRUMBLE

When weeks are dangerously dull you need reminders of nice things that happen around you, namely

- cheap kids’ clothes

- bones from the 15^th century dug up at the back of your office

- gathering around said bones and staring at them in excitement for long periods of time

- sugar thermometers

- crumble.

As much as I’d like to share the first four items of the list with everyone, you probably have normal-size physiques and you don’t therefore fit into tops for fourteen-year-olds; the bones have sadly been moved for someone else’s eyes and excitement; and my new sugar thermometer has now become my most treasured possession joint winners with my blender, so back off.

I am however nice enough to contribute to the niceness of your week with the below recipe for the nicest crumble. There’s fresh summery fruit in it and a crunchy crumbly topping with oats and things plus a date caramel layer that makes everything so delicious and sweet and sweet things are the best and they improve the quality of your week (life?) a billion percent.

We can’t really complain after all.

GLUTEN-FREE BANANA CREAM BISCUITS

I am known for being the biggest flour geek (hah) and I really couldn't hide one bit of my excitement when I first took a bite of one of these biscuits (yeh ok fine. I chucked like twenty of them in my mouth like I'd never seen a biscuit before). It's because shortbread is the first thing I've baked from scratch in my life and these are like shortbread but taken to the next level. There's no gluten in sight, just this boatload of protein that is lupin flour which I got from a health food store in Italy, and almonds and this delicious subtle hint of banana. Shall we then mention the creamiest ever creamy banana & almond butter filling. Hello, my name is Iz and I am the bearer of joy a.k.a. crumbly creamy vegan gluten-free banana biscuits.

MINI BOSTON CREAM PIES

I don’t usually get emotional about things (she says, then cries her heart out watching The Muppets Christmas Carol. Why did you have to die, Tiny Tim, although you don’t actually die). However lately I’ve been in this funny mystical mood as a result of which I am quite at peace with the universe and most its inhabitants. Officially surviving the winter (only JUST) has helped, and so has the prospect of squatting in lovely new one-bedroom flats in Bermondsey, thanks Alex I love you too.

But let’s get to the cake part shall we. Well it so happens that this introspective state I am in has led me to fond memories of the best trip ever to America last year, and to this rainy day in Cambridge, Massachusetts after a gourmet dinner of watery salad (don’t ask). Adam who is known for being a part-time guardian angel promptly saved me from everlasting grumpiness and took me to Veggie Galaxy where I had this massive slice of Boston cream pie.

So here’s me sharing the recipe for a mini version of it (I’m only small), and celebrating that one day and today and everything in-between. Like trips with people I care loads about, and being upset about turning a quarter of a century old, and the longest darkest winters; almost running away from everything; people sticking with me even though I can’t possibly figure out why, the view of Tower Bridge from the bus in the morning, going to work only to make friends, nice songs, lunch breaks, ideas, little white fluffy dogs and the calming verse from the age of break – ‘something good will come from nothing’.

SBRISOLONA - ITALIAN CRUMBLY ALMOND TART

To make up for the Englishness of my last bakes I go back to Northern Italy with this one and it might be an Italian common feature but I’m also going back to hilarious names, see Panpapato.

Sbrisolona is dialect for ‘big crumbly thing’ and this thing is in fact quite big and very crumbly. It is also very delicious and it’s not the kind of tart that you slice and eat in a civilised way so unless you’re one of those people that eat an almond with a knife and fork you can break it into pieces as big as you like (or just jump to the next level and don’t even break it into pieces and eat the whole thing like an enormous biscuit. Don’t tell anyone I said that).

It's also perfect for nice weather. As in, if you eat three quarters of it over the sink you can go for a walk (crawl?) to Stoke Newington and you may even get tanned (if you're not me).

See? Happy days all around.

GOLDEN SYRUP BUNDT CAKE

Long weekend in Italia implies coming back to sunny (!!!) London with a tummy full of vegan piadina, a slightly lighter weight on my chest and a head full of ideas. It would be nice to sleep at night sometimes however dreams of cakes and biscuits and things made with buckwheat and sugar sprinkles and lupin flour (yes, flour shopping, yes) and clouds and kittens and seaweed do make me all excited and creative (oooh, creative). So whilst my to-do list of cakes grows and grows and the space in my flour cupboard (!) worryingly diminishes, here’s a recipe for the sweetest moistest cake you’ll ever taste, prepared and baked kind of as soon as I stepped out the plane this morning. It shouts ENGLAND all around because of the golden syrup, but oh well, it could be worse. It could be raining.

HOT CROSS BUNS

In just under a week’s time I’ll be in sunny Italy shovelling into my face monster portions of gnocchi and pizza and proper Easter eggs (sorry British Easter eggs) and chocolate of all sorts, and the 60 pence brick-sized flapjack from the corner shop by the Shard and the packs of Fruit Shortcake bought out of desperation from quality-checking too many videos in Khmer will only be a distant memory. However, lately during my semi-sleepless nights that I euphemistically like to call ‘recipe development sessions’ I’ve found myself pondering over British Easter cakes and treats. It may or may not be that I’ve spent the last four days in bed with a broken stomach, and survived on boiled rice and corn cakes only. Or that in this timeframe I’ve watched all of Mary Berry’s programs five million times, alternating them with Masterchef for sanity (?). 

But it did take me back to Easter time in good olde Shropshire, where Easter lunch is like, cucumber on toast but then you have four different cakes for pudding. And then you have tea with four more half an hour later. Well Simnel cake deserves an honorable mention because it looks so pretty and there’s like a half a kilo of delicious marzipan in it. But we all know marzipan is terribly misunderstood, so when I decided to pick one Easter treat to veganise, I went for my mates fluffy sticky hot cross buns. They’re really easy to make (even with a hot water bottle carefully positioned onto your stomach) and they’re filled with all nice sorts of things ranging from cinnamon and spices to dried fruit and peel and covered in apricot glaze. Best enjoyed between a bite of cucumber on toast and two of Simnel cake. Or you can use them as the bun for a chocolate egg sandwich. Who am I to judge. Hah.

OREO RICE KRISPY SQUARES

If it so happens that one evening you decide that sometimes there is beauty in the world surrounding you, you should wake up in the morning and celebrate with some noteworthy treats. Well it's this remarkable Rice Krispy square recipe that has brought me joy once again, this time via an upgrade. I know they're like the deities of all Rice Krispy squares, so where do you even start improving them one may say, but sometimes unexpected upgrades come to you like a deus ex machina plus this is Oreos we're talking about. Make sure you're fine with sugar rushes and cow exploitation in Oreo factories and go for it. At least no bees were blindfolded or earmuffed or tapped on the shoulder in the process.

WHITE CHOCOLATE CHESTNUT THUMBPRINT COOKIES

They say it’s all about the little things so I say, make a toast to Pret coffees on the house, pack your wardrobe with pretty summer dresses, buy Lego notebooks for your friends, read Italian patisserie recipe books until you feel the urge to bake enough crostata to feed an army, and if all this is still not enough to fill the hole in your heart, then go fill your stomach (it works just as well). May I suggest that you make chocolatey hazelnutty chestnut flour cookies that are so delicious and that you can share with the whole universe as they are vegan and gluten-free and no Oreo-manufacturing Scottish cows were harmed in the process.

At your service.