It’s hard to ignore the hankering for a dessert trolley.
Remember those? My kingdom for a maraschino cherry.
When this world is too much with us, the desire for cake and the need to escape to a universe where people take ice-bucket challenges and spend hours faking videos is irresistible.
A video of two cats speaking French and playing the piano hits the spot.
Our boy enters the living room, observes the two oldies engrossed in their separate iPads and murmurs: “Ah, you’re both in Twitter-verse”.
More recently, we have switched off our brains and switched on to the new show on the block, Is it Cake?
It has its origins in online videos of everyday objects that look and feel real – a gym shoe, a hamburger or even a laptop – but hey, take a knife to them and you’ll find they’re actually sponge, sprinkles and buttercream delight.
You’ve been had.
The bakers are second to none. It’s an art form.
The first week was fast food – burgers and tacos.
So the bakers have to make a cake that looks like fast food and then their cake is hidden among a few other items of real fast food and the judges have to judge Is it Cake?
It’s not rocket science but one of the bakers has green hair and a green beard and another is great on the one liners: “The lesson is,” he tells us, “that with a lot of hard work and determination, you can still be a disappointment to your parents.”
The host Mikey has a twinkle in his eye and delivers a side order of self deprecation: “They gave an idiot a machete,” he says, wielding an alarming looking blade that may have come out of my ma’s kitchen drawer.
Mikey even gets a samurai sword to slice through the object and reveal if it is really a gym shoe or is it cake?
It’s all flashing knives and buttercream splatters.
Oh the suspense of it; oh the joy of cake.
Ma would have said: “Little amuses the innocent.”
The recent kitchen clearance at her house opened the door on a lost world.
Take the bone handled grapefruit knife – no, take it - a bent bladed contraption with a serrated edge.
She’d halve the fruit, then slip the knife between segments and pith, dividing it neatly before sprinkling it with brown sugar and toasting it under the grill.
Take a few Apostle spoons … each featuring a robed little saint clutching rosary beads. As you stir your tea, offer a prayer of thanksgiving for a decent cuppa.
She had a runcible spoon – of Owl and Pussy Cat fame - for serving up plenty of honey and there was a tincy wincy silver spoon for the polite serving of sauce.
Observe the big squeezy bottle of HP on my kitchen table… weep.
There was a gentleman’s moustache mug to stop you dunking your handlebars.
There were silver vesta cases; baking rings; fish knives.
She also had elasticated metal bracelets for keeping your sleeves up.
They sang songs of the old newsroom - of rolled-up sleeves and frantic hold-the-front-page moments.
One night, as the presses were rolling, the editor spotted a mistake and sent me down to ask the press room boss to “strike it out” off the hot metal plate.
Restaurant critic Jay Rayner was mourning the demise of fish knives and melba toast recently.
Ma used to do melba toast. You want to know the secret? Maybe not.
He wrote about the restaurant dessert trolley.
When the waiter trundled it over at the end of a meal, it was a joy to behold.
Remember Black Forest gateau; a custardy sherry trifle; a huge iceberg hulk of pavlova dripping with cream… the joy of being offered “a little bit of everything”.
Once, there was no greater pleasure than taking the iron cage lift to the first floor of Bewleys and being shown to a velvet banquette.
There, a waitress in black with a white frill of a cap would take your order. She’d whisk over a three-tiered cake stand piled high with almond buns; cherry scones; French fancies and flaky millefeuilles.
The buns made eyes at you all through coffee.
Rayner too mourned the passing of that international gesture at the end of the meal, where you catch the waiter’s eye and scribble an imaginary cheque in the air.
How do you scribble a cash card? You can’t.. but I know a baker that could do you a brilliant fake one.
