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.