Cake is care

This is not a recipe post

I just finished my therapy session and I have this deep desire to eat a slice of cake!

I read a recipe of quatre quarts - pound cake - in this book I am reading and that’s all I can think about at the moment. In the book the protagonist makes it for her lover on Valentine’s Day, as a sort of research project rather than a romantic gesture, really. But I wish to bake it for myself. Mix equal parts butter, sugar, egg and flour, add a drop of vanilla essence and pop it in the oven. Hot, orange oven. See it rise through the moist glass and as soon as the oven bell goes ‘TING’, take it out and cut a thick slice, before it cools down. Sit under my blanket and eat that hot slice, still moist with the confluence of butter and sugar. Warm, like sunshine filling me up from within. Like sun suddenly bursting out of the sky after many many cold and grey days.

I have had this hunger for cake for a while now, six years to be precise, when I had my first therapy session. Yes, that’s when the desire for cake birthed within me; an occasional occurrence earlier, on birthdays or anniversaries, and now I was sitting in my apartment, eating slices after slices of Victoria sandwich. Soft sponge layered with jam and cream. It was just what the doctor ordered. In my case, the therapist. She suggested I ate something sweet after our sessions and cake was the most accessible sweet there. Living in London made me realise how access to good, affordable cake can change your life. A bit of an exaggeration, maybe. But cakes did me good. I loved that the London bakers did not skimp on butter, not even the ones available at Tesco and Sainsbury, or the coconut flavoured one at the neighbourhood Turkish store. I always kept a stock. Ofttimes to eat right after a therapy session or an intense bout of anxiety - disheveled, exhausted from the act of sharing and dreaded by the thought of trudging through another day I found solace in a soft slice of crumbly, fluffy piece of food.

I tried to keep up this little ritual once I moved back to India, but I was forever in hunt of a good cake. Delhi has decent cakes, but they are not the kinds that satiate me from within. They’re too generic, without a strong personality. Theobroma is my go to dessert shop, but even their fresh pineapple cake fails to comfort me when the craving gets real. The dense loaf does the job to an extent, but at times it does not count as cake; not when I am looking for a slather of fresh cream or the fluffy sponge. On birthdays I stick to Wengers’ chocolate cake, but it is a strictly birthday cake. The same cake in a slice format tastes terribly dry. Perch does a great coffee tres leche - soft cake soaked in cream, milk, coffee, but it is an indulgence neither my body nor my pocket could afford on a regular basis.

Last few good cakes that I had and that I wish I could eat more often, were either baked by someone or were not in Delhi. Last year in December I ate a ghee cake in Kochi that a friend ordered, it blessed my soul on a sunny Christmas morning. Another one was baked by my sister - a simple carrot cake that we turned into a Victoria sandwich by layering it with jam and cream. Last month I was in Japan where I treated myself to some really good slices - a home-style sponge cake, a classic strawberry short cake or the most indulgent of all, the miserable cake at Echire Maison de Buerre, layers and layers or rich butter cream and delicate almond cake. My hunger for cake was satiated in Japan and for a moment I thought I wouldn’t need any cake for a while, that I had taken my fill and I could run on the supply.

But once back in Delhi, I wanted cake again. Few days back my friend and master baker Kishi Arora fed me her gluten free chocolate orange cake, I ate too slices unapologetically; the best I have eaten in Delhi. But, she lives on the other end of the city and as much as I would like I can’t order her cake frequently. The places closer to me that perhaps make better cake are either too expensive or try too hard to make their cakes look like art installations. They’re pretty to look at and maybe delicious too, but they lack the simplicity and honesty that i so vehemently seek in a cake and they never seem to fulfil my desire.

All these years of eating cake, it has occurred to me that a perfect slice of cake does not have to be pricey, or made with world class ingredients, or perfectly dressed with flowers or icing; it just has to be one that is accessible and available, that is soft with a bit of warmth, and one that does not skimp on butter.