Domestic Whore

Cake. We all want it,  we all need it. Except some weird people, but never mind them. I can remember after my best friend had a baby and I went to visit her but her sister was there, and had just heard that her best friend - age 21 - had been killed in a car crash. 

So I got the cake out, the cake I'd made for my girlfriend, and gave some to her sister. We had a tiny, tiny chat about the idiocy of 'oh your girlfriend's died, have some cake, that'll make it better,' but then decided that it is somewhere true, that when you are at your most desolate you want human comfort, whether it is the arm around your shoulder, or chocolate cake. However briefly, it helps.

I've always made cake. When I was a teenager I'd always ask for cookery books as presents, and then, maybe when everything got way too difficult for me to sometimes even think, I stopped making it. Then I had some children, got married, and did indeed make my own wedding cake, but I didn't eat any of it for rather complicated reasons. And eventually, eventually, I started making cake again. I was fascinated by the idea of decoration, and made several birthday cakes for my poor daughters with dalmatian spots painstakingly painted all over the fondant with a paintbrush and black food colour. When I think now of how lumpy the fondant was on the cake I blush.

So somehow I got much  better at cake. Practise, and reading books, and more time maybe. I'd also written two novels, and found that when you let your creativity out, sometimes other sorts of creativity get let loose as well. It did take me until this last Christmas to produce a completely smooth fondant covered cake, for my sister in law.

In 2003 my sister was widowed at 43 after being married for 25 years. Several years later she remarried, and it was very emotional for me to make her wedding cake. Emotional, plus my lovely dress was ruined forever by the cake, but also so lovely I knew I wanted to do more. Then one of my girlfriends said she was getting married, but didn't want a cake, but changed her mind when I made her the cake at the top of the post. Simultaneously my husband was made redundant, so money became a bit of an issue. So I decided to make cake for money.

Cupcakes, as we all know, are hugely fashionable. They also sell for lots of money, well, more money than is involved in the expense and effort of making them. I took a food safety training course, but my kitchen still needs inspecting by trading standards. You inform the tax office and trading standards that you're going to start trading in a month, and in that month they inspect your kitchen. Some time has elapsed since I decided to do this, but I've been ill almost non stop and self published a novel.

There's not much information out there to tell you what trading standards expect. Apparently your fridge should have containers so things can be separated from each other, but apart from that it's all a bit hazy. And it's your kitchen, the most comforting and comfortable room in your house, as Elizabeth David would tell you, so how do you manage that dichotomy of ultra clean and at the same time it being your home? Well, I suppose a lot of people manage that just absolutely fine, but as someone who has always found much better things to do than housework - like writing novels, reading, talking to my children, you know the stuff people with clean kitchens don't do very often, obviously, where would they get the time - this is all a bit of a nightmare. So more than anything else, this is to keep a record of what still needs doing - and at the moment, that's most things. Including getting a kitchen sink.