1. Chocolate Cake
by Michael Rosen
I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.
Sometimes we used to have it for tea
and Mum used to say,
'If there's any left over
you can have it to take to school
tomorrow to have at playtime.'
And the next day I would take it to school
wrapped up in tin foil
open it up at playtime
and sit in the corner of the playground
eating it,
you know how the icing on top
is all shiny and it cracks as you
bite into it,
and there's that other kind of icing in
the middle
and it sticks to your hands and you
can lick your fingers
and lick your lips
oh it's lovely.
yeah.
Anyway,
once we had this chocolate cake for tea
and later I went to bed
but while I was in bed
I found myself waking up
licking my lips
and smiling.
I woke up proper.
'The chocolate cake.'
It was the first thing
1 thought of.
I could almost see it
so I thought,
what if I go downstairs
and have a little nibble, yeah?
It was all dark
everyone was in bed
so it must have been really late
but I got out of bed,
crept out of the door
there's always a creaky floorboard, isn't there?
Past Mum and Dad's room,
careful not to tread on bits of broken toys
or bits of Lego
you know what it's like treading on Lego
with your bare feet,
yowwww
shhhhhhh
downstairs
into the kitchen
open the cupboard
and there it is
all shining.
So I take it out of the cupboard
put it on the table
and I see that
there's a few crumbs lying about on the plate,
so I lick my finger and run my finger all over the crumbs
scooping them up
and put them into my mouth.
oooooooommmmmmmmm
nice.
Then
I look again
and on one side where it's been cut,
it's all crumbly.
So I take a knife
I think I'll just tidy that up a bit,
cut off the crumbly bits
scoop them all up
and into the mouth
oooooommm mmmm
nice.
Look at the cake again.
That looks a bit funny now,
one side doesn't match the other
I'll just even it up a bit, eh?
Take the knife
and slice.
This time the knife makes a little cracky noise
as it goes through that hard icing on top.
A whole slice this time,
into the mouth.
Oh the icing on top
and the icing in the middle
ohhhhhh oooo mmmmmm.
But now
I can't stop myself
Knife -
1 just take any old slice at it
and I've got this great big chunk
and I'm cramming it in
what a greedy pig
but it's so nice,
and there's another
and another and I'm squealing and I'm smacking my lips
and I'm stuffing myself with it
and
before I know
I've eaten the lot.
The whole lot.
I look at the plate.
It's all gone.
Oh no
they're bound to notice, aren't they,
a whole chocolate cake doesn't just disappear
does it?
What shall 1 do?
I know. I'll wash the plate up,
and the knife
and put them away and maybe no one
will notice, eh?
So I do that
and creep creep creep
back to bed
into bed
doze off
licking my lips
with a lovely feeling in my belly.
Mmmmrnmmmmm.
In the morning I get up,
downstairs,
have breakfast,
Mum's saying,
'Have you got your dinner money?'
and I say,
'Yes.'
'And don't forget to take some chocolate cake with you.'
I stopped breathing.
'What's the matter,' she says,
'you normally jump at chocolate cake?'
I'm still not breathing,
and she's looking at me very closely now.
She's looking at me just below my mouth.
'What's that?' she says.
'What's what?' I say.
'What's that there?'
'Where?'
'There,' she says, pointing at my chin.
'I don't know,' I say.
'It looks like chocolate,' she says.
'It's not chocolate is it?'
No answer.
'Is it?'
'I don't know.'
She goes to the cupboard
looks in, up, top, middle, bottom,
turns back to me.
'It's gone.
It's gone.
You haven't eaten it, have you?'
'I don't know.'
'You don't know. You don't know if you've eaten a whole
chocolate cake or not?
When? When did you eat it?'
So I told her,
and she said
well what could she say?
'That's the last time I give you any cake to take
to school.
Now go. Get out
no wait
not before you've washed your dirty sticky face.'
I went upstairs
looked in the mirror
and there it was,
just below my mouth,
a chocolate smudge.
The give-away.
Maybe she'll forget about it by next week.
2. Lay Lady Lay by Bob Dylan
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colors you have in your mind
I’ll show them to you and you’ll see them shine
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile
His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean
And you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he’s standing in front of you
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
Copyright © 1969 by Big Sky Music; renewed 1997 by Big Sky Music
3.From Travelling Songs by Simon Armitage
Oh motorway, motorway, where have you bin, oh motorway where are you stopping?
I've bin down to London to pick up the King
to take him up north to go shopping.
Oh bring him to us
for a Pontefract cake
and we' ll light up the sky with a rocket
No, I in taking him home
with the killings he made
with some fluff that he found in his pocket.
to take him up north to go shopping.
Oh bring him to us
for a Pontefract cake
and we' ll light up the sky with a rocket
No, I in taking him home
with the killings he made
with some fluff that he found in his pocket.
It's not that he can't
afford the best
crisp-edged in crisp dark boxes,
but he buys them
specially: misshapes,
broken moons of gingers, dust-
speckled Jaffa cakes,
stumps of chocolate
fingers, unstuck custard creams,
the last of a line
of ruined Bourbons,
jammy dodgers past their prime. Take
eat, he spreads them
on a little silver dish
when he invites you back to tea,
a biscuit priest,
while you stare at them,
a puzzle with some pieces missing,
a map of the world
with the continents drifting
apart. In the clock-ticking hush
somehow (but how?) you have to choose.
5. Summer Cake Recipes by Nigel Slater
Cake is my downfall.
I can refuse
a glass of wine,
push away
an opened box
of handmade chocolates,
spurn a toffee from the tin
and turn my nose up
at a HobNob,
but I can never,
ever resist
a slice of cake.
The feel of the soft, open texture of the sponge
between my finger and thumb,
the warm scent of vanilla, orange, lemon and almond.
A slice of cake is both pleasure and vice
and I sometimes look away
as I walk past
a particularly tempting
shop window.
I had been awaiting Nicola Humble's Cake – A Global History (Reaktion Books, £9.99) with as much anticipation as a warm Dundee cake coming out of the oven on a winter's afternoon. A mere 150 pages in length and the colour of creamed butter and sugar, this is the story of cake and its place in our history, its myths, legends and folklore. It arrived this week and I have found it as difficult to put down as a slice of village-fête chocolate cake. This sliver of a tome is testament to research, but also contains a drawing that has haunted me since childhood – John Tenniel's 1872 illustration of the lion and the unicorn fighting over Alice's plum cake from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.
For many, the cake tins are put away from Easter (simnel) until the leaves start falling from the trees (gingerbread or apple kuchen), but I am rather fond of a light-as-a-feather sponge on a June afternoon. A vanilla sponge with a hint of rosewater; a shallow almond torte with domes of apricot peeking through the crust; a blueberry battercake or perhaps a Swiss roll with a filling of cream rippled with crushed raspberries. Bring a soft butter sponge and a bowl of strawberries complete with their green hulls into the garden, and you will find more than the bees buzzing round you.
Summer cakes should probably be lighter than the ginger and spice-flecked temptations of autumn. The dark butterscotch notes of muscovado can be put aside until September in favour of pale sugars and fillings of soft jams and fresh fruits. I baked a fine cake for summer the other day with peaches and blueberries. I started with a light almond sponge, then folded in a thread of berries and then some clingstone peaches, a little squished where I had forced them off their stones. It made a perfect summer dessert as well as a tea-time cake.
I am not a fan of the high-rise double-decker cake – fine for a birthday, but I prefer something altogether more shallow and less showy. That said, a pale, flourless sponge stuffed with fruit can be quite heavenly in summer. Try Nicola Humble's hazelnut sponge below: it has a gentle, almost Edwardian quality to it that particularly appeals on a summer's afternoon. It's the sort of baking that begs to be held high on a cake stand and served with a proper silver slice. (No, I haven't one either.)
I have spent my life eating food that is in harmony with nature and the rhythm of the seasons. The year has reached that point when the air is so still and calm, the sun so high, that all I want is a huge bowl of salad and a slice of tender, fruit-marbled cake. Right now I really wouldn't mind if I never chop an onion again.
A cake for midsummer
Blueberries and peaches are rippled through the soft, almond-rich crumb of this pretty cake – the very essence of summer. I sometimes add a few rose petals and an extra handful of raspberries at the last moment, or perhaps a light scattering of caster sugar.
Serves 8-10
175g butter
175g golden caster sugar
200g ripe peaches
2 large eggs
175g self-raising flour
100g ground almonds
1 tsp grated orange zest
a few drops of vanilla extract
150g blueberries
Line the base of a 20cm, loose-bottomed cake tin with baking paper. Set the oven at 170C/gas mark 4.
Cream the butter and sugar together in a food mixer until pale and fluffy. Halve, stone and roughly chop the peaches. Beat the eggs lightly then add, a little at a time, to the creamed butter and sugar, pushing the mixture down the sides of the bowl from time to time with a rubber spatula. If there is any sign of curdling, stir in a tablespoon of the flour.
Mix the flour and almonds together and fold in, with the mixture at a slow speed, in two or three separate lots. Add the orange zest and vanilla, and once they are incorporated add the chopped peaches and blueberries.
Scrape the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Test with a skewer – if it comes out relatively clean, then the cake is done. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes or so in the tin, run a palette knife around the edge, then slide out on to a plate, decorating as the fancy takes you.
Nicola Humble's hazelnut and raspberry cake
A wonderful light yet sumptuous cake from Nicola Humble's book. As she says: "I have made this cake for many years, and it never fails to please. A German-style cake which substitutes ground nuts for flour, this is delightfully squidgy and satisfying without being cloying. It works very well as a dessert for a party."
Serves 8
220g whole hazelnuts
6 large eggs
180g caster sugar
250ml double cream, whipped
150-200g raspberries
Grease and flour a 24cm springform tin. Line the base with a circle of baking parchment. Set the oven at 170C/gas mark 4.
Place the nuts in a dry frying pan (preferably cast iron) and toast carefully over a low heat, shaking the pan to rotate them. This can also be done in a moderate oven, but the nuts must be checked frequently, as they burn very easily. When they are golden in patches, allow to cool. Grind the cooled nuts in a food processor. The aim is to reduce most of the nuts to a coarse flour, but to retain some larger chunks for texture. Be careful not to process too far or they will release their oils and turn to nut-butter.
Separate the eggs carefully. Whisk the yolks and sugar until pale, creamy and very thick. Stir in the nuts. Whisk the egg whites to firm peaks then gently fold them into the yolk mixture with a large spoon. Turn into the tin and bake until the cake begins to shrink away from the sides of the tin – approximately 45 minutes. Leave in the tin to cool for 10 minutes, then release the clip and turn out on to a rack. When completely cold, carefully cut the cake in half horizontally, then fill with whipped cream and raspberries.
If preferred, the mixture can be baked in two layers in shallower cake tins, in which case the layers will take about 25-30 minutes to bake.
I had been awaiting Nicola Humble's Cake – A Global History (Reaktion Books, £9.99) with as much anticipation as a warm Dundee cake coming out of the oven on a winter's afternoon. A mere 150 pages in length and the colour of creamed butter and sugar, this is the story of cake and its place in our history, its myths, legends and folklore. It arrived this week and I have found it as difficult to put down as a slice of village-fête chocolate cake. This sliver of a tome is testament to research, but also contains a drawing that has haunted me since childhood – John Tenniel's 1872 illustration of the lion and the unicorn fighting over Alice's plum cake from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.
For many, the cake tins are put away from Easter (simnel) until the leaves start falling from the trees (gingerbread or apple kuchen), but I am rather fond of a light-as-a-feather sponge on a June afternoon. A vanilla sponge with a hint of rosewater; a shallow almond torte with domes of apricot peeking through the crust; a blueberry battercake or perhaps a Swiss roll with a filling of cream rippled with crushed raspberries. Bring a soft butter sponge and a bowl of strawberries complete with their green hulls into the garden, and you will find more than the bees buzzing round you.
Summer cakes should probably be lighter than the ginger and spice-flecked temptations of autumn. The dark butterscotch notes of muscovado can be put aside until September in favour of pale sugars and fillings of soft jams and fresh fruits. I baked a fine cake for summer the other day with peaches and blueberries. I started with a light almond sponge, then folded in a thread of berries and then some clingstone peaches, a little squished where I had forced them off their stones. It made a perfect summer dessert as well as a tea-time cake.
I am not a fan of the high-rise double-decker cake – fine for a birthday, but I prefer something altogether more shallow and less showy. That said, a pale, flourless sponge stuffed with fruit can be quite heavenly in summer. Try Nicola Humble's hazelnut sponge below: it has a gentle, almost Edwardian quality to it that particularly appeals on a summer's afternoon. It's the sort of baking that begs to be held high on a cake stand and served with a proper silver slice. (No, I haven't one either.)
I have spent my life eating food that is in harmony with nature and the rhythm of the seasons. The year has reached that point when the air is so still and calm, the sun so high, that all I want is a huge bowl of salad and a slice of tender, fruit-marbled cake. Right now I really wouldn't mind if I never chop an onion again.
A cake for midsummer
Blueberries and peaches are rippled through the soft, almond-rich crumb of this pretty cake – the very essence of summer. I sometimes add a few rose petals and an extra handful of raspberries at the last moment, or perhaps a light scattering of caster sugar.
Serves 8-10
175g butter
175g golden caster sugar
200g ripe peaches
2 large eggs
175g self-raising flour
100g ground almonds
1 tsp grated orange zest
a few drops of vanilla extract
150g blueberries
Line the base of a 20cm, loose-bottomed cake tin with baking paper. Set the oven at 170C/gas mark 4.
Cream the butter and sugar together in a food mixer until pale and fluffy. Halve, stone and roughly chop the peaches. Beat the eggs lightly then add, a little at a time, to the creamed butter and sugar, pushing the mixture down the sides of the bowl from time to time with a rubber spatula. If there is any sign of curdling, stir in a tablespoon of the flour.
Mix the flour and almonds together and fold in, with the mixture at a slow speed, in two or three separate lots. Add the orange zest and vanilla, and once they are incorporated add the chopped peaches and blueberries.
Scrape the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Test with a skewer – if it comes out relatively clean, then the cake is done. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes or so in the tin, run a palette knife around the edge, then slide out on to a plate, decorating as the fancy takes you.
Nicola Humble's hazelnut and raspberry cake
A wonderful light yet sumptuous cake from Nicola Humble's book. As she says: "I have made this cake for many years, and it never fails to please. A German-style cake which substitutes ground nuts for flour, this is delightfully squidgy and satisfying without being cloying. It works very well as a dessert for a party."
Serves 8
220g whole hazelnuts
6 large eggs
180g caster sugar
250ml double cream, whipped
150-200g raspberries
Grease and flour a 24cm springform tin. Line the base with a circle of baking parchment. Set the oven at 170C/gas mark 4.
Place the nuts in a dry frying pan (preferably cast iron) and toast carefully over a low heat, shaking the pan to rotate them. This can also be done in a moderate oven, but the nuts must be checked frequently, as they burn very easily. When they are golden in patches, allow to cool. Grind the cooled nuts in a food processor. The aim is to reduce most of the nuts to a coarse flour, but to retain some larger chunks for texture. Be careful not to process too far or they will release their oils and turn to nut-butter.
Separate the eggs carefully. Whisk the yolks and sugar until pale, creamy and very thick. Stir in the nuts. Whisk the egg whites to firm peaks then gently fold them into the yolk mixture with a large spoon. Turn into the tin and bake until the cake begins to shrink away from the sides of the tin – approximately 45 minutes. Leave in the tin to cool for 10 minutes, then release the clip and turn out on to a rack. When completely cold, carefully cut the cake in half horizontally, then fill with whipped cream and raspberries.
If preferred, the mixture can be baked in two layers in shallower cake tins, in which case the layers will take about 25-30 minutes to bake.
Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or visitguardian.co.uk/profile/nigelslater for all his recipes in one place.
It's a rainy afternoon
In 1990
The big city geez it's been 20 years-
Candy-you were so fine
Beautiful beautiful
Girl from the north
You burned my heart
With a flickering torch
I had a dream that no one else could see
You gave me love for free
candy, candy , Candy I can't let you go
All my life you're haunting me
I loved you so
Candy, candy , Candy I can't let you go
Life is crazy
Candy baby
Yeah, well it hurt me real bad when you left
I'm glad you got out
But I miss you
I've had a hole in my heart
For so long
I've learned to fake it and
Just smile along
Down on the street
Those men are all the same
I need a love
Not games
Not games
Candy, Candy, Candy I can't let you go
All my life you're haunting me
I loved you so
Candy, Candy , Candy I can't let you go
Life is crazy
I Know baby
Candy baby
UOU UOU UOU
Candy, Candy, Candy I can't let you go
All my life you're haunting me
I loved you so
CANDY CANDY CANDY
life is crazy
candy baby
candy baby,
candy, candy
The big city geez it's been 20 years-
Candy-you were so fine
Beautiful beautiful
Girl from the north
You burned my heart
With a flickering torch
I had a dream that no one else could see
You gave me love for free
candy, candy , Candy I can't let you go
All my life you're haunting me
I loved you so
Candy, candy , Candy I can't let you go
Life is crazy
Candy baby
Yeah, well it hurt me real bad when you left
I'm glad you got out
But I miss you
I've had a hole in my heart
For so long
I've learned to fake it and
Just smile along
Down on the street
Those men are all the same
I need a love
Not games
Not games
Candy, Candy, Candy I can't let you go
All my life you're haunting me
I loved you so
Candy, Candy , Candy I can't let you go
Life is crazy
I Know baby
Candy baby
UOU UOU UOU
Candy, Candy, Candy I can't let you go
All my life you're haunting me
I loved you so
CANDY CANDY CANDY
life is crazy
candy baby
candy baby,
candy, candy
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this
to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.
Some nights better, the lost body over me,
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding-cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
I haven’t wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I’ve dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this
to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.
Some nights better, the lost body over me,
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till I suddenly bite awake. Love’s
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding-cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don’t think it’s only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
Not everyone in New York would pay to see Andrew Lloyd WebberMay his trousers fall down as he bows to the queen and the crown
I don't know what tune the orchestra played
But it went by me sickly sentimental
Can I have another piece of chocolate cake
Tammy Baker's got a lot on her plate
Can I buy another cheap Picasso fake
Andy Warhol must be laughing in his grave
The band of the night take you to ethereal heights over dinner
And you wander the streets never reaching the heights that you seek
And the sugar that dripped from the violin's bow made the children go crazy
Put a hole in the tooth of a hag
Can I have another piece of chocolate cake
Tammy Baker must be losing her faith, yeah
Can I buy another cheap Picasso fake
Andy Warhol must be laughing in his grave
And dogs are on the road, we're all tempting fate
Cars are shooting by with no number plates
And here comes Missis Hairy legs
I saw Elvis Presley walk out of a Seven Eleven
And a woman gave birth to a baby and then bowled 257
Now the excess of fat on your American bones
Will cushion the impact as you sink like a stone
Can I have another piece of chocolate cake
Tammy Baker, Tammy Baker
Can I buy another cheap Picasso fake
Cheap Picasso, cheap Picasso fake
Can I have another piece of chocolate cake
Kathy Straker boy could she lose some weight
Can I buy another slice of real estate
Liberace must be laughing in his grave
Almost every year I resolve to do something that I very quickly fail to do. There’s cold but still fractionally satisfying comfort in the thought that it’s not me but probably you too. (Yes you, you with the cake!) We all do this kind of thing, and philosophers have suspected from the start that understanding this aspect of our weakness is a large part of getting to know us. It’s the Ancient Greek problem of akrasia, weakness of will, intemperance, acting against one’s better judgement — call it what you like. Why do X when you see that X is bad and you can just as easily avoid X? Why fail to do Y when you are unconstrained and judge that Y is the best course? Why slouch there, coveting that cake, when you could just as easily get a grip on yourself and do something good, like go for a run?
Socrates says that no one does evil deliberately. If you choose something that’s not in your interest, it’s a matter of ignorance, an incomplete grip on the Good. Aristotle goes on about our failures to overcome our passions. Maybe modern thinkers like Davidson say that akrasia is the result of not thinking everything through. None of this swings it for me, explains the phenomenon, captures how it is from the inside. When I covet more cake, I do so with about as much understanding of the Good as I’m ever likely to have. I’m also not a slavering wreck, somehow overwhelmed by a desire for cake. I’ve thought it through, really, and I see clearly that more cake is not a good idea. Still, I eat more cake.
When you know that some action is not in your best interest, when you know that nothing good will ever really come of it, when you know another course is the right one, and you know this, calmly, dispassionately, and all things considered, why do you sometimes choose the wrong action anyway? What are you thinking? What are you doing?
Article printed from Talking Philosophy: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com
Lovely poem Michael! You have the gift of making lovely verses and we share the same love for chocolate cakes. I’m not sure though if I can make such a wonderful poem to express how this food gives me so much joy.
ReplyDeleteHi Piedad, Glad you enjoyed the selection. Michael Rosen is a fab poet indeed!
ReplyDeleteSaba
From which store Crowded House bought chocolate cake? From some New Zealand Australian store? Or somewhere else?
ReplyDelete