This was a weekend for comfort food.
Friday evening found us, as is our wont, curled up on the sofa watching old episodes of Top Chef (and by old, I mean New York old) and just about to tuck into a feast of Chinese food. When I wandered into the bathroom, I made the displeasing discovery that the floor was covered in water. My first thought was that water was leaking from the flat above, as has happened before and which, while annoying, is, at least, not my problem. Sadly the ceiling was dry to the touch and after my boyfriend had dismissed my suggestion that the water seemed to be coming up from the floor and maybe was some sort of upwards leak, we eventually tracked it down to the lavatory.
We wiped up the mess, placed a tupperware container under the leak (now safely disposed of) and hoped for the best. After ten minutes, the container was overflowing and we realised that our only option was to call a plumber or stay up all night mopping up loo water. A plumber was with us shortly after 11pm and started taking the lavatory apart. He was, thankfully, able to stop the leak but it emerged that the entire inner workings of the lavatory had disintegrated. We do have another loo in the flat, albeit currently without a light so you have to have very careful aim, so it is far from a crisis but it was not the ideal way to kick off the weekend.
At the back of my mind was also the fact that I needed to be up early on Saturday morning to meet my brother so that we could go and see my grandmother in her nursing home. With the rest of the immediate family away for the weekend, we had offered to go down to ensure that she didn't go unvisited.
I probably don't go to visit her as much as I should. I am painfully aware every time that I see her that she is becoming less and less, shrinking before our eyes. I know that one day soon she will simply cease to be and slip out of a life that, to be honest, she doesn't really care for any more.
It's hard to know that within the hour, the visit will have faded into a vague memory with the chocolates that we brought as a gift serving as the only reminder that someone had been. When we were asked if we'd seen anything of my grandfather recently, we had to explain again that he had died two years before and watch her eyes cloud with tears. The next moment it was forgotten as she noticed the bright blue of my brother's socks.
But all we can do really is sit with her for the hour or so that she can manage and hope that she's that little bit happier, if only in the moment.
By the time I got home I was feeling a little bit tired, to put it mildly. All I wanted to do was hibernate. I sent boyfriend out for the evening without me and did the only thing that I could think to do - go into the kitchen and bake a cake.
This is a perfect cake for those sort of occasions. More a tray bake than a cake really, it requires little more effort than throwing everything in a bowl and giving it a mix. Easier with precious new Kitchen Aid obviously but not that much harder with a hand held whisk or a wooden spoon. After 35 minutes, you have a perfectly spiced and sticky cake. If your cake sinks, as mine has, all the better for that is the key for a gooey centre that can rival the best chocolate brownie. This cake needs nothing more than a sprinkling of icing sugar but you could whip up a quick cream cheese frosting if you felt that way inclined. I didn't particularly. I ate my cake warm with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream. Just perfect.
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Treacle Spice CakeYield: Approx 20 squares using a 30cm x 23cm tin Barely adapted from Mary Berry's Baking Bible
Ingredients
- 225g unsalted butter, softened
- 115g brown sugar
- 225g black treacle (molasses is pretty much the same thing)
- 275g all purpose/plain flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 4 large eggs
- 4 tablespoons milk
Cooking Directions
- Preheat the oven to 160C/325F. Line a 30cm x 23cm baking tin with greaseproof paper and grease well.
- Put all the ingredients in a large bowl and beat for a couple of minutes until all the ingredients are combined.
- Pour into your baking tin and bake for 30-40 minutes until the cake feels springy and has started to come away from the side of the tin.
- Leave the cake to cool in the tin before dusting with icing sugar and cutting into pieces.