Sunday, May 1, 2011

Royal Wedding Cake


A friend of mine suggested that the image of the royal family is being made over from a traditional aristocratic one (reserved, mad, kill things) towards that of the wealthy middle class. Perhaps nothing supports that idea more eloquently than the specially-created Middleton family crest, which contains white mountain-like chevrons, "to symbolise the family's love of skiing."

My own love of an occasion is symbolised on my family crest by a stylised firework, a giant asterisk that also symbolises my love of a qualifier. And that I'm not out.

So, I went to a friend's house to watch the wedding and offered to bring dessert. If only it were that simple. The act of offering to bring dessert nudges a little mental snowball off a hill in my head that gathers size, momentum and an assortment of debris. The question of the Right Dessert.

"Victoria sponge", I think, and I don't know I would have thought of that if there hadn't been a poll on the Taste.com.au site asking whether fruitcake, chocolate mudcake or Victoria sponge would be best for the big day. Chocolate mudcake was the front runner, which sort of horrified me, though it does turn out that alongside the traditional multi-tiered fruitcake, Prince William requested a "chocolate biscuit cake". I thought that might be something like a chocolate ripple cake, which would have been awesome, so 70s, like if he'd asked for French Onion Dip at the canapés do. Instead it's this.

Anyway, I decided a Victoria sponge would be the go, and then had to find out what a Victoria sponge is. Not much of a sponge as it turns out. Same proportions as a pound cake (ie equal weights flour, sugar, eggs and butter) and doesn't involve beaten egg whites. Traditionally filled with jam and cream.

I had everything in the house except jam, so I was going to have to make a trip to the shops, and if I was going to go to the shops anyway maybe it wouldn't have to be for jam? That makes no sense, but it's the way I thought. Indeed, I thought, since this is not Victoria getting married but the dawn of a new etc. etc., surely it should be something less traditional than jam and cream. Something like... (several mental steps edited out here) ... rhubarb-and-strawberry compote and custard.*

Which is what happened, and it went down well, though if I did it again I would keep the rhubarb and the custard apart. I didn't actually mean to mix them as much as I did, I got distracted. The rhubarb flavour overwhelmed the custard so there weren't two flavours in the middle, just a one-note "rhubarb creme". It also produced a very flat, retro shade of pink, but I guess you could say this is consistent with the slightly artificial allure of other "commemorative" dishes (have you seen the colour of Coronation Chicken?) and, I see now, the background of this blog.
















It still looks like a good time, I think. And the tartness of the rhubarb made it acceptable as a breakfast dish as well.

* A fair few of my mental trains of thought end in rhubarb-and-strawberry-compote and custard. And what do you know, a "rhubarb crème brulée tartlet" was served at the Lunchtime Reception.

In other news...



On the Easter weekend I decided to make "healthy hot cross buns", a recipe that contained wholegrain flour, walnuts, dates... very worthy. I thought they might also be nice but they turned out so worthy you could stone people with them.

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