The Art of Baking Blind

by Sarah Vaughan

  Breathing out noisily in the kitchen, he was like a wild animal: not a cheetah – that would be to flatter him – but a fox, or a wolf. Yes, she had thought with amusement, with his dark locks, flecked with grey and slick with sweat, and his hairy legs there was definitely something vulpine about her husband.

  And then, like a wild animal, he had turned.

  ‘Not baking again?’ And where once there would have been affectionate amusement, now there was a snarl. ‘Don’t you think you should lay off it a bit, Jen? It’s nearly ten o’clock at night. I’m sure that even you don’t need to be baking now.’

  The attack was like a blow to her stomach. She had been tempted to retort that he too was pursuing his hobby at an unsociable time but remained silent, focusing instead on the way he gulped down some water, his Adam’s apple rising as the liquid ran noisily down his throat. A spurt gushed from the bottle and splashed on the flagstone floor.

  ‘I’m just practising for tomorrow’s competition,’ she had excused herself, as she reached for a cloth. She bent down to wipe the small puddle, biting back a bubble of anger. ‘I just wanted to get these perfect.’

  ‘It’s becoming a bit obsessive, though, isn’t it?’ he had needled her. ‘No one in their right mind needs to cook to the extent you do. And,’ he continued, ‘I’m not sure it’s good for your health.’

  ‘It’s fine for my health.’ Her voice was sharp, keen to prevent the unspoken criticism. But this time it was spoken.

  ‘It’s not, Jen. Your BMI must be in the obese bracket. You’re becoming, no, you’ve become, fat, my love.’

  The word had ricocheted round the room. He had never called her that before. Cuddly, voluptuous, curvy – these have been the chosen euphemisms, uttered only when she has sought reassurance. Recently both have avoided any reference to her widening girth.

  Now some unspoken contract had been breached.

  She had turned to face him, tears welling in her pale blue eyes, and searched for reassurance. But his look was cold and cynical.

  ‘I mean it, Jen.’ He was matter-of-fact, his tone frank. ‘You need to get a grip. This cookery competition is sheer indulgence. No one needs to gorge themselves on pies, cream cakes and biscuits. Least of all you.’

  He had turned the knife casually as he reached into the fridge for a bottle of apple juice: ‘A bit of exercise wouldn’t go amiss either. If I were your GP, I’d be advocating a strict exercise routine as well as a diet.’

  ‘Then it’s a good job you’re not,’ she had hissed.

  ‘Well, yes. I’d see you as a drain on NHS resources,’ he had retorted.

  She had searched for a glimmer of humour, but there was no attempt at a quip.

  He had raised an eyebrow, the look of censure unwavering. ‘I’m going to bed.’ And she had been left alone, as ever, in her kitchen.

  On autopilot, she had wiped the surface, taken the cooled muffins from the rack and placed them in a tin, and then, very deliberately, taken the half-eaten one and crammed it into her mouth.

  Even that had offered no succour. The soft crumb was dry against her throat and she had spat it into her Belfast sink, rasping as she coughed up a sob. Clutching the cold enamel, she had let the tears come, crying out of self-pity for a lost marriage and a lost self.

  Today, that excess of emotion has left her feeling hollowed out. The puffiness around her eyes has died down, and been disguised with foundation and a touch of blue eyeliner but the sense remains of a bridge crossed. She cannot dislodge a line remembered from some long-forgotten A-level text: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ Now, who wrote that? The poet – of little use after that English exam; and of none when she started nursing – remains elusive but the words take on a mantra as she creams her fat and sugar. She imagines the mixture curdling when beaten with eggs that are too cold. The sponge can still be enjoyed, but it won’t rise as well; it won’t be up to scratch. It’s a prosaic analogy but seems apt: with a knot in her stomach, she wonders if the same will be true of her marriage?

  It seemed clear on the way down on the train, this morning, that she has a choice. Either she can do as Nigel wishes: give up the competition before even starting, give up baking, seek to starve herself; become the slim, healthy-looking wife she is now in no doubt he would like, perhaps even take up a sport – though the thought of running is laughable; maybe something suitably pedestrian, like golf. Or, she can run with this: bake like fury, bake with passion, find an outlet for her creativity that is recognised and applauded. And then, at the end of this three-month process, she can take off the blinkers, step on the scales, and step back into the role of a wife – albeit one with a marriage in tatters.

  Put like this, the decision is clear and so this competition – this simple sponge – has taken on a disproportionate importance. After nearly three decades of tending to others, she has the chance to do something for herself. She can shine at what she does but, equally, she realises with a glimmer of excitement, she can redefine herself. She does not need to be a corpulent cook, the jolly fat lady of the competition – though she is aware Eaden and Son have pigeon-holed her as this. Perhaps she could even ask that they use Jenny, her name as a girl, not the more matronly Jennifer. Perhaps she could be Jenny once more.

  She focuses on the cake. Eggs, their fat yolks orange and spherical, plop into a mixing bowl and are quickly beaten before being whisked into the mixture. Self-raising flour and extra baking powder are sieved from thirty centimetres above the bowl, and folded in lightly. A splash of milk makes the mixture moister still. She eases the batter out of the bowl with a gentle push of a spatula, guiding it into the greased and lined cake tins, taking excessive care to check they are evenly distributed. She weighs the tins just to check. The tops are caressed with a palette knife and then the tins are placed side by side in the centre of the oven as she waits for the alchemy to begin.

  * * *

  Eleven o’clock and Karen, her sponge in the oven, is watching her fellow bakers. Vicki folds and spoons, creams and beats as if enjoying an elegant courtly dance. Claire works precisely: movements swift and economical; no time for indulgence here. Jennifer seems excessively nervous. And Mike bakes with a cavalier disregard for instructions. As if there has been enough in his life to be anxious about without him fretting over a cake.

  While Harriet darts between the contestants, her fellow judge, Dan, is ambling down the side of the work stations, moving with the cool confidence of a handsome man in his early thirties with the world at his feet.

  Karen drinks him in. Thick dark curls wreath his shapely head; his eyes, behind hipster glasses, are frank and bright; and his jaw line and cheekbones strong and exquisitely defined. He is, she thinks, an Adonis, plucked from some Mediterranean glade and placed in the most prosaic of settings: a kitchen. His skin, the silkiest olive, gleams with health; his full mouth curls as if contemplating a kiss.

  But it is his body that most invites comparisons with the Greek gods: firm pecs hinted at through a cotton shirt unbuttoned just one button too much; a torso tapering to a slim waist; and the height – he is six feet four inches – glutes and legs of an Olympic rower.

  In late middle age, he could run to fat were he to immerse himself in the bread, pasta and kuchen that he claims he was brought up on. But she suspects he is too narcissistic – and canny – for that. His cookery book may have reached number three in the non-fiction charts in the run-up to Christmas, but he must know the public’s appetite is less for his recipes than for himself. He is one of those rare creatures with true charisma. He is delectable, dangerous – and unattainable.

  Or maybe not. Karen’s assessment of individuals is automatic. A throwback to a childhood when the need to check out the opposition was instinctive: the first thing done as she entered a room. And her instincts, honed over forty years, are largely right.

  But now she senses danger: the danger of flirtation – and potential seduction. She watches him walk towards her station, his moveme
nts fluid but purposeful and waits to meet his gaze. His eyes are warm; that upper lip curls.

  ‘Hello.’ He smiles and there is a palpable frisson.

  Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  ‘Hello.’ Her tone is polite, rather than inviting, but her chin is tilted up as if in challenge.

  ‘And how are you doing?’

  The question is ludicrous. A non-sequitur. What does he mean, how is she doing? She is taken aback by his physical beauty; she is wrong-footed.

  ‘I mean the sponge?’ His smile is encouraging.

  ‘Oh, the sponge.’ As if she could have been thinking of anything else. ‘Oh, perfect – well, I hope so, we shall have to wait and see,’ she hears herself burble. She never burbles. He thinks I’m stupid, she fears. I need to get a grip.

  ‘You should be thinking about getting your cakes out of the oven.’ Harriet’s voice rescues her, and cuts through the hum of activity. The sponges are soon perched on wire racks, eased out of their greased and lined tins and set to cool.

  ‘And five minutes.’

  The bakers caress their cakes with warmed palette knives, smoothing raspberry jam over the sponge. Jennifer would like to add butter cream, or replace the jam with whipped cream and sugared raspberries but she appreciates the need for simplicity. Claire, dowsing her sponge with caster sugar, grimaces at her cake’s relative lack of height.

  ‘And – tools down.’

  A shriek rips the air. Vicki, hands clutched to her head, is paralysed in horror. Her cake is splayed upside down, icing sugar dusting the floor, jam oozing out from between the dislodged sponges.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK.’ Red-faced and frantic, she looks close to tears as she gesticulates that others should leave her. ‘I was just trying to move it on to a better plate.’

  She bends to scoop up the ruined concoction, breaking a sponge as she does so. Then noisily, messily, unbelievably, she begins to weep.

  ‘Oh, poor love,’ Jennifer murmurs.

  At the back of the room, Claire exhales.

  Kathleen

  The first time it had happened, she had barely allowed herself to believe she was pregnant. Of course she had known. She had held the secret tight inside her, incapable of telling anyone, least of all George, in case she gave him false hope. For four whole weeks, as she baked and wrote and opened supermarkets, she had walked around knowing she had exciting news and just longing to share it. Her breasts tingled and, if she looked very closely, she imagined she could see a slight swell.

  Afterwards, it had helped that she hadn’t shouted her joy from the rooftops; hadn’t even uttered a whimper. It had helped her to half convince herself it was just a late period, delayed by the stress of writing her column. A period four weeks late.

  There had been little pain. And that had made it all the more confusing.

  For there had been a surprising amount of blood.

  8

  A Battenburg may seem a little complicated to make but, I assure you, it is worth the effort. Few cakes are as guaranteed to raise a smile. There is something celebratory about a Battenburg and something frivolous. And no one can doubt the care and effort required to bake it. This is a cake to make for someone you love.

  When Harriet approaches her to discuss how to make a Battenburg, the advice is unnecessary. Well, it would be a Battenburg, thinks Vicki. Battenburg is the cake that started her whole baking-for-validation obsession.

  It began, of course, with her mother. She was going to bake a Battenburg for Frances’s fortieth birthday. Vicki was thirteen. A ludicrously ambitious cake for a thirteen-year-old to bake. But then Vicki was nothing if not her mother’s daughter. Weaned on ambition, Frances used to joke – and Vicki remembers the laughs of her mother’s friends: uncomfortable and insincere.

  As a small girl, Vicki had loved shop-bought Battenburg. She would ease apart the coloured squares of cake, the synthetic pink and lemon yellow, her fingers sticky with jam and the sugary marzipan she would unfurl like a delicate ribbon. She would nibble each square daintily, imagining herself to be a fairy princess. And then she would savour the peeled-away ribbon, rolling it tight then unrolling it, tearing off strips to melt on her tongue.

  Eating Battenburg was a rarity. The most exquisite treat. Frances refused to buy her daughter cake, though flapjacks, made with black treacle not golden syrup, and carob brownies from the local health food shop – heavy with wholemeal flour, dry with walnuts, disappointingly un-chocolately – were allowed.

  Battenburg was something she only got to sample at her best friend Nicola’s – Nicky’s – house. In the warmth of her kitchen, or at the bottom of her garden, they would dissect the tessellated squares into quarters and put them on her toy tea set to make fairy sandwiches for their Tiny Tears.

  Of course, at thirteen, she was long past playing with dolls but the thrill of Battenburg – its status as a joyful, celebratory, somewhat illicit cake – remained with her. And so, buoyed by Nicky, she decided to make one for her mother’s fortieth birthday.

  She did have one moment of hesitation.

  ‘You don’t think she’d prefer a carrot cake, do you?’ she had asked Nicky. ‘I’ve never seen her eat a Battenburg – or anything so pink.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Nicky had scoffed. ‘You don’t make someone a carrot cake for their fortieth birthday! What is she, a rabbit?’ And so she had ignored her reservations and blocked them out in a flurry of giggles.

  With Nicky’s mother’s help, they had found a recipe and spent an industrious afternoon concocting the sponge. The pink squares were a livid pink, the lemon, an aggressive yellow; the cake tapered slightly at one end where the tessellation was imprecise and bulged, barely perceptibly, in the middle.

  But the thirteen-year-old Vicki had tried to remain optimistic.

  ‘Do you think she’ll like it?’ she had asked Nicky and her mother, as she gnawed on a fingernail, biting the cuticle so that it tore and sprang salty blood.

  ‘Like it? She’ll love it,’ Nicky’s mum had reassured her, watching, concerned. ‘She’ll love it because it’s fantastic and she’ll love it because you made it for her.’

  She had presented it to Frances the next morning – the day of her birthday – with her usual breakfast of half a grapefruit and a cup of Earl Grey tea, black with a slice of lemon. She had meant to keep it until teatime but the anticipation was too intense.

  Frances, uncomfortable at being expected to remain in bed – she normally rose at six thirty – had laughed, incredulous.

  ‘Oh darling. Did you make it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Vicki’s cheeks flushed pink with pleasure. Suddenly she was no longer thirteen but eight, seven, six. Coming home from school with birthday cards, love letters, Mother’s Day cards for Frances: the spelling somewhat erratic, the sentiment – a cry for love, for attention – always the same.

  ‘I don’t know quite what to say!’ Frances had assessed it from either end, her left eyebrow raised in mock horror.

  Say it’s lovely, Vicki had willed her, hotly aware her mother wasn’t supposed to react in this way.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly interesting. What strong colours! Did you mean it to be quite so psychedelic?’ Her laugh had tinkled.

  Vicki had flushed.

  ‘They’re not meant to be psyche … so bright,’ she had tried to excuse herself, her voice small and tight. ‘It’s supposed to be delicious.’

  ‘And I’m sure it will be,’ Frances had cut in, just in time.

  Twenty years on, Vicki can still recall the relief when she heard this – and the shame when her mother then undermined this reassurance.

  She had brightened, momentarily. ‘Do you want to try a bit?’

  ‘Oh not now, darling.’ Her mother had sounded instantly anxious. ‘Maybe later – at teatime. And just a little bit. I’m not sure that much food colouring is good for anyone.’

  Now, in the Eaden’s competition kitchen, Vicki realises she has a chance to right that
wrong. To bake a Battenburg that will scare no one with its colouring and that will win the validation she has sought for twenty years. And so she bakes with a determination that eluded her earlier. She is going to bake the most exquisite Battenburg and surprise not just the judges but, more importantly, her mother.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes in and Claire, recalling her truncated catering diploma, is still trying to persuade herself she can do this: that she can pour different-coloured batters into separate compartments and structure them so expertly they form a checkered square. She is naturally neat and precise: her milky-tea hair tied back in a high ponytail; her apron strings double knotted; her trainers new for the occasion; her tiny jeans ironed. Her fingers shake as she folds the parchment-lined foil neatly in half and then forms a four-centimetre pleat to separate the different-coloured mixtures, but she is sharp with herself: ‘Pull yourself together; you can do this; you know you can.’

  Her fingers still shake. She imagines her daughter – soft brown hair framing great big eyes that trust her as emphatically as when she was a baby. The image calms her. ‘You have to do this – for Chloe. You don’t have a choice.’

  * * *

  Karen, too, is trying to focus, concentrating on a recipe that allows her to achieve order, if not perfection. She is still acutely aware of Dan’s presence; his height as he saunters down the aisles, those broad shoulders, those startling blue eyes. She tries to zone him out, imagining instead her daughter, Livy, at fifteen already a beauty, or, indeed, Jake.

  No, better not think of Jake. She barely understands him now, this boy-man she produced whose truculence perturbs her. Or perhaps she understands him too well. She bites down a flicker of fear. Is his shift in attitude towards her just down to teenage hormones, or is there a basis for his derision? You’re fooling no one, Ma. Did he see them? And, if he knows, has he exposed her? Has he told Oliver?