There is a piece of cake on a plate in front of her. It is dense, moist, almost black; it is spiked with liqueur, and wet with apricot preserve. There is the scent of almonds, a silver fork on a brocade napkin, a strawberry cut and splayed into almost a flower.
Melmoth, Sarah Perry
When I first moved to the UK, our energy provider made an error with the gas bills. It was eventually rectified, but for nearly five years I was under the impression that gas was exponentially more expensive than electricity, and quite literally out of my price range. And so, on cold days in my flat, I’d turn on our electric oven and stand uncomfortably close to it in order to keep warm. Somehow, I managed to justify the cost of ingredients (but not the cost of central heating) and would spend long afternoons baking, the backs of my legs pressed against the oven door. After I’d creamed butter and sugar, and the batter had been placed in the oven, I’d sit on the floor to be near the warmth, and lose myself in a novel until the harsh beep of my phone alerted me to the now-risen cake.
The books I read on these afternoons were almost invariably slim tomes, ones that flew along at a cracking pace, and could be devoured in a single day, or by the time the icing was dry on the cake. Murder mysteries, Conan Doyle short stories, gripping Gothic horror – I’m not very good at handling scarier stories, but the comforting smell of a cake behind me was always a help.
I still love baking cakes. Even though I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I’ve long been aware that cakes fill the kitchen with both literal and figurative warmth. They’re almost always too large for a family, or a couple of flatmates, and so beg to be shared. Whether showy, or homely, they suggest that you’ve made an effort. In the colder months, I fancy a specific sort of cake. Light sponges make sense in spring and summer, but when it’s grey and bleak outside I want heavy cakes, dense with nuts, or with rich chocolate icing. The kind of cakes that warm you in more ways than one.