The Cake

I have always enjoyed baking and decorating cakes, and over the years I have become reasonably competent at it.

Each year I make a Christmas cake and a Yule Log and in the past I have spent over 30 hours putting elaborate icing onto a Christmas Cake.

Unfortunately over the last few years I have not been able to sit long enough to create a really elaborate finish. That said this year I did come up with a reasonably good cake, which I took to share at church.

Whilst creating this year’s cakes I had to hide them from our cat’s and dog. I was half way through emptying a cupboard in which I could hide them when I remembered a cake my wife made for my daughter’s Birthday, and a Yule Log I made a few years ago. These two memories gave me the inspiration to write this poem.

The Cake

The baking tin was triple wrapped,
brown paper, tied with string,
when a lumpy, brown, sticky mix
was poured from height therein.

The oven had been warming up,
when the door was pulled asunder
and the tin was placed atop a shelf
not middle, but just under.

Slowly the sticky mixture baked?
and gradually it did harden,
'till tested ready with a skewer,
from the furnace it was pardoned.

Cooled in tin, and then on rack,
and bathed in cooking brandy,
then wrapped and stored and bathed,
some more was modus operandi.

The rich brown fruit cake was liberated,
and brushed with sticky jam.
Then wrapped in a golden covering
of evenly rolled marzipan.

Next came the icing. Purest white
and smoothly layered all over.
Then left to set and layered again
sheer white like cliffs at Dover.

Now for the deftly placed nozzle
a squeeze, a press and withdraw
colourful piping surrounded the base
then around the top ‘encore’.

Figures were sculptured in marzipan.
The nativity scene oh so neat,
the beautiful cake was finished,
all that was left is to eat.

The cake looked so impressive,
with its nativity scene, so unique,
nobody wanted to cut it,
So it sat on the table all week.

People hungrily admired it,
but no one dared take a slice,
then late last night for his supper,
the dog ate it all in a trice.

John Carré Buchanan
30 December 2011