The Great cake relay!

My dad’s great grandfather was a baker for half a century. My mum’s father and great grandfather were also bakers and confectioners. This being the case, you would expect that I should have Royal Icing running through my veins.

Not a bit of it.

I’m not Delia Smith. I’m not Ria in ‘Butterflies’ either...somewhere betwixt the two would be a better approximation of my culinary skills. I have dabbled with the odd cake here and there but you sort of need time and kitchen space to truly create some magnificent sponge edifice, and I have neither at my disposal. This being the case I passed the mission of creating a cake for Churchy to Val Jones, a lady who works at my office and who is a rather talented amateur cake maker on the sly. The problem wasn’t whether or not Val could come up with something special, but rather how the heck I was going to transport the wretched thing down to London, along with my luggage, my camera, my bag and the food I had bought in at Waverley’s M&S...

It was slightly tricky, but Annabel helped a lot and we got a taxi to the hotel, so the cake actually made it down pretty much unscathed! I was slightly concerned, I confess, as to how I was going to get it through the turnstile at the gates. It’s not the first time I have been stuck in one of those contraptions. Many, many years ago (back when I actually went out and visited places) I got wedged in a turnstile at Murrayfield. It was January, it was utterly Baltic, and I had on an old sheepskin jacket that John Motson would have been proud of. Alas, it was so big and unwieldy that it – and by default myself – became jammed in the metal twirly things. Not very dignified, as I recall. My mother still laughs about it.

Thankfully there was no repeat of this fiasco at the Oval. I did wonder if security were going to swoop and demand to carry out a search on the unwieldy package all done up in string. I had visions of people taking it off me and detonating it as a suspicious item! All of which would have been a great pity for Val, who created the masterpiece.

The irony of the cake reaching the Oval safely and then being diverted from its original target makes me smile. Poor old Churchy! Safely delivered into his hands and then taken away for a quick photograph, the confectionary masterpiece was then passed for distribution amongst the hard working ground staff for the odd slice or several. It proved so popular that it sounds as if they demolished the whole thing!

I think some of my fellow Rampants were worried I would be upset, but not a bit of it. As long as someone liked and enjoyed it then I am perfectly happy: my way of saying thank you to those at the Oval for all their hard work. Already I’m trying to think how on earth we top it next year!

Maybe one shaped as a cricket bat...