You know, I really do love cake. If I think back over the years there have been so many wonderful cakes in my life. The first cake of memory I was only 5 years old (or there about) It was a Train cake, covered in great icing and colorful Pebbles (M&M’s for those who have no clue what I am talking about). My granny had made it (well I assume she made it - lets not pop that bubble just in case anyone out there knows that in fact she got it from the Chinese Bakery up the road in Grey Lynn). Then there were the years of banana cake at home - it seemed to be the cake of choice in our household - mmm with lemon sugar icing - just the way it should be. This was the staple of my cake diet - maybe it was the only way that my mother could get me to eat fruit. I remember German Plum cake, initially from that little bakery on Akland St in Melbourne, and my own version for years after - which we all agree was far thicker and plummier than any Australian bakery could make (in such a way as to actually make a profit). German Plum cake is guaranteed to make you happy when you are down, as Tim knows.

It’s just that cake really is a happy event thing. It’s simple and has this wonderful capacity to console and bring joy to just about any situation you can think of. It is also an interesting side note that there are very few, if any, cakes that are linked to terrible situations (happy to be proven wrong, but in the end the mass of opinion supports cake as a happy thing).

Eggs, flour, sugar, butter - with plums, bananas, coconut, lemon, orange, rum, candy - an over abundance of icing. What else do you need (well a gym membership probably).

So this needs to be my next endeavor when I finally get out of the corporate life. Cake by the slice to address the inherent nostelgic need many of us have to be comforted. Each time I walk past Magnolia or Billy’s Bakeries, it reminds me how right this would be. So there we are, cake-by-the-slice (sorry no wedding cakes - weddings, whatever else they may be, are a hotbed of dramatic tensions, not a place to sell cakes).

Categories: Dreams