The Art of Baking Blind

by Sarah Vaughan

  At twenty-seven, she knows she is unusual in taking the time to bake but she is only doing what her mother Angela has taught her to do. ‘Just carrying on the Trelawney tradition,’ she tells Chloe and her tangled-haired daughter crimps the edges of the pasties or fashions gingerbread stars before launching into a dance routine, her skinny legs taking her out of the cramped kitchen in one leap.

  ‘You’re a natural.’ Claire’s mum nods approvingly, though she can’t quite resist tweaking the leaves on her pie crust.

  ‘Oi!’ Claire feels a familiar stab of irritation. It looks better, though, and she leaves it in its place.

  ‘I wish you’d go back to baking,’ Angela tends to continue; meaning, I wish you’d stop sitting on a checkout and go back to working in a bakery. But the hours are better in the supermarket, she always answers; how could she start work at five or six with Chloe?

  ‘Well, what about going back to college?’ her mother suggests, and the catering course curtailed by an unplanned pregnancy. But they both know that’s a pipe dream. The days of being a student; of dreaming about working in a revered – perhaps even a Michelin-starred – restaurant disappeared nine years ago when she was handed a screaming, mucous-and-blood-coated baby. She in no way regrets Chloe – how can she when she offers the purest, most unconditional love she has ever experienced? But getting pregnant at seventeen soon put paid to such fantasies. Claire Trelawney doesn’t have the luxury of dreams.

  * * *

  In the marketing department of Eaden and Son’s, Cora Young is staring at a photo. A slight young woman cuddles a long-legged girl who could almost be her sister were it not for the premature lines of anxiety above the woman’s brows and the passionate ferocity of that hug. Lank hair is scraped off a pale face from which blue eyes shine with an unexpected intensity; and there is a look of tension and energy about her limbs; as if constantly vigilant, poised to spring into action.

  Cora, faced with an almost exclusively middle-class array of candidates, decides the fact this one works for Eaden’s can be brushed over; she won’t be seen as having snuck through the back door, but rather as having fought her way there, she will be an asset.

  She takes another look at the photo.

  I like her, she thinks. I’ll make the call.

  * * *

  When the call comes for Jennifer confirming that she sailed through the audition, she is in the middle of making short-crust pastry. Her squat fingers are coated in butter and flour and she has just bound the crumb together with iced water and a fat orange egg yolk, the wet ingredients marrying the dry in an act of culinary alchemy.

  She is making a chicken and tarragon pie with buttered new potatoes and green beans for Nigel, her husband – though whether he will want it is a different matter. Perhaps the potatoes if he can catch her while they’re still steaming and before she can slather them with butter. Then he’ll toss them with the beans and some little gems into an undressed and unsatisfying salad. On second thoughts, he may allow himself a splash of balsamic vinegar.

  Once upon a time Nigel was as much of a foodie as she is. But at fifty, his younger brother, Tom, suffered a massive heart attack and it was – as Nigel repeatedly, and somewhat sanctimoniously, puts it – ‘a wake-up call’.

  Out went the evening whiskies, the chocolate after dinner, the slab of cake when he got in from work, the generous helpings of red meat. And in came running. Not a gentle jog round the block. But the obsessive, relentless running of a fifty-two-year-old man who has felt mortality snapping at his heels and is desperate to outrun it. A man who, in middle age, has decided to become a marathon runner.

  ‘Well, it’s better than having an affair, Mum,’ Lizzie, their youngest, chastises her when she ventured to comment on how their father had altered.

  And of course it is, though in its way it feels like a betrayal.

  It is not just the hours he puts in: the thrice-weekly runs with a twelve-mile one each weekend; the weekly running club meets, where he runs alongside fearsomely toned women triathletes; the marathons themselves – and, in just over a year, he has already clocked up four. It is his rejection of their former way of life at a time when, in a cruel twist of fate, all three of their girls have also fled: Lizzie, immersed in her first year at uni; Emma in Montpellier in the third year of her French degree; Kate, post-finals, who has just set off for a year’s travelling in Australia.

  She knows, of course, that she should try to be the good wife she has always been and accommodate his new needs; bend to his will; adapt her cooking. But her whole identity is tied up with providing rich food for him and every time she serves a steamed sea bass with a Thai salad or, pre-race, a bowl of pasta with a tomato-based sauce, not an unctuous carbonara, she feels a pang of resentment. She is also hungry. She eats the steamed sea bass and, of course, appreciates its delicate sweetness but she is left hankering for carbohydrates. As she clears up, she reaches for the ever replenished cake tin, or opens the fridge. With Nigel safely dispatched from the kitchen – ‘No, I’ll tidy up, darling, don’t you worry’ – she undoes the good she has done and gorges on chocolate torte or egg custard tarts.

  Of course, she knows this behaviour is unsustainable. She realised it at Christmas when Emma, always the one with the sharpest tongue, had quipped to Lizzie that Nigel had become a ‘Jack Sprat’.

  ‘And what does that make me?’ Jennifer had retorted – challenging them to finish the nursery rhyme.

  Em had had the decency to blush. ‘But we like you cuddly,’ she had tried to reassure her, putting her arms around her mother’s waist and trying to nuzzle into her neck as she had as a child. But the damage was done. For once, Jennifer had pushed her away, rejecting the child who was typically the most frugal with her affection. ‘Try to think before you speak,’ she had hissed. ‘I do have feelings.’

  Nigel, wandering into the room as she stalked out, had rolled his eyes at his grown-up daughters and offered his opinion. ‘Menopausal.’ She had heard the girls’ laughter, and though she knew they were just trying to hide their embarrassment and placate their father, it had struck her as the cruellest betrayal. She had looked down at her stomach, bulging against the waistband of her velvet trousers after a particularly lavish Christmas lunch, and had been filled with self-loathing. More than that, standing beneath the mistletoe, her broad feet planted firmly on the seventeenth-century flagstones of her hallway, she had felt hollowed out with despair.

  Of course, Nigel was right. She is menopausal but her relentless baking has nothing to do with this and everything to do with trying to fill the growing emptiness in her life.

  She feels bereft. She has lost the role she has played for twenty-five years but, like a hamster racing neurotically on a wheel, she cannot stop and adapt to changing circumstances. She has always cooked for her family and the fact that no one wants her food – or, seemingly, her attention – does not deflect her. The pies and cakes keep coming; for village fêtes, charity coffee mornings, elderly neighbours. When friends comment on her generosity, her response suggests it is natural; that it is a reflex. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘Food is love.’

  ‘Jennifer Briggs.’ The voice on the end of the telephone breaks into her reverie.

  ‘Jenny, yes.’

  ‘We’re calling from the Search for the New Mrs Eaden. You auditioned on Tuesday? We’d like you to take part.’

  Standing in her kitchen, gripping the phone with still damp hands on which tendrils of wet pastry cling, Jennifer’s heart swells.

  Kathleen

  She bakes, as she prefers to do, in her Chelsea town-house kitchen. Sun streaming through the sash windows, bathing her in light.

  Her scales are neatly aligned; her ingredients arranged in size order. A reporter’s notepad and a pencil sit on a side table – ready to jot down any tweaks to her recipes or thoughts for The Art of Baking, the book she has confirmed she will publish next year.

  Today, though, the page is empty. Inspiration unnecessary, or, perhaps, r
efusing to strike. She has already written the next column: an ode to the joys of cake baking in which she somewhat rashly promises ‘heaven in a cake tin’ by mixing fat, flour, sugar and eggs. And so there is no demand that she bake. She can just potter; creating sponges or biscuits, meringues or patisserie for the sheer thrill of doing something she enjoys.

  She is systematic, though, and prolific. Intently focused, she bakes from memory, making batch after batch of the most familiar sponges: Madeira cake; coffee and walnut cake, and a Battenburg, coloured with almond essence and sieved raspberries. A chocolate cake comes next, to be topped with a rich fudge icing; then madeleines – chaste in contrast to such decadence. By lunchtime, the table heaves with sponges in various states of readiness; cooling; complete; or freshly anointed with the most exquisitely judged icing.

  Despite herself, she finds she is reaching for her notebook, conjuring up the cakes’ deliciousness with a few choice words: the fudge icing is ‘muddy’; the Battenburg ‘scented’; the coffee cake ‘just the right side of bitter’. No, that’s not right. The coffee cake ‘marries sweetness with sophistication: the butter cream lifting the sponge; the walnuts adding a certain creaminess’. Is that correct? Are walnuts more creamy than bitter? She nibbles one, then crosses out the description and provides an unsatisfying alternative. ‘Creamy bitterness?’ she writes and underscores the question mark.

  Perched at the table, she takes a sip of Earl Grey and allows herself to sample one small madeleine: the blandest of cakes, perhaps, but comforting, nevertheless. She wraps a couple for George to enjoy later and places the coffee and walnut cake in a tin to give to her cook, Mrs Jennings. But most of these beauties are destined for a different home.

  By mid-afternoon, the cakes have been boxed and sent two and a half miles away to the Westminster Children’s Hospital, situated on the corner of Vincent Square.

  The consultants are bemused that a hospital treating severely malnourished children should receive such unsolicited goodies. But the nurses enjoy them for their tea break.

  6

  Try to involve your children as much as possible in your baking. They will love the chance to work alongside their mother and it is never too early to teach both little girls and boys to bake. Remember to show patience and good humour, to smile at their endeavours, and you will be assured of a willing helper ever eager for your praise.

  ‘Quickly, Alfie. No, not that way.’ Vicki is struggling to pinion her resistant child into his car seat as a chill wind whips her body and threatens to slam her with the car door.

  It is seven forty-five on the day of the first round of the competition, and Vicki has to get Alfie to her friend, Ali, in Putney, before driving to Eaden’s country estate in Buckinghamshire for ten o’clock and the start of the competition. She should have masses of time but that is without contending with the vagaries of London traffic – and of her son.

  She is already braced for the inevitable meltdown – ‘But Mummeeee, I need you’ – and has factored in twenty minutes to deal with it. She could write the script: twenty minutes of initial reassurance, followed by firm parenting, followed by blatant bribery. She will only extricate herself from his clutches, as they both know, with the desperate promise of Lego. And then his tears will miraculously evaporate. She will race to her car and then inch her way up an exhaust-choked Fulham Palace Road at the peak of rush hour. She will feel guilty, stressed, angry. Just anticipating it makes the band of tension around her forehead tighten.

  ‘I said: “No”.’

  A friend once told her the way to deal with car seat resistance was to punch your child in the stomach. At the time she assumed it was a joke, the kind of black humour the more witty of her mummy friends trade in; the sort of comment you see on Mumsnet where bored mothers vie to churn out the best one-liners. Now she is not so sure. She contemplates her offspring grimly. He is grinning cherubically, trying to swipe the felt hairclip holding her fringe while she uses both hands to try to force the central seat-belt buckle together. His torso, fast becoming that of a strong little boy not a cuddly toddler, strains against her, his back arching. She jerks her head away from his clutches and simultaneously forces him back in his seat. The seat belt is buckled. He holds her gaze, the smirk melting into a bottom lip wobble. She repeats, with a somewhat steely satisfaction: ‘I said: “No”.’

  Since when did she become this hectoring figure? she wonders, as she slams his door unnecessarily aggressively, opens the driver’s door, and buckles her own seat belt. She does not want to be a shouty mummy. It is, as one health visitor once told her, somewhat euphemistically, ‘not helpful’. And it is certainly not what outstanding teachers do.

  It is also not what mummies with only one child do. If she had a car full of children, and a job to get to, it would be more understandable. But she has just one child, as the dull ache of her monthly period reminds her; one child on which to lavish all her time and attention. As things stand, her behaviour is just not acceptable.

  All the same, she excuses herself somewhat petulantly, as her Freelander slips its way into the stream of traffic, she does not have it completely easy. This morning, for instance, she could have done with some help from Greg, but where is he? Just like every morning, he was out of the house by a quarter past six. True, as a commercial lawyer he likes to be at his desk by seven fifteen at the latest, and it’s his willingness to do this that allows her the luxury of being at home with Alfie. But, even so, she would love it if he could sometimes be around.

  He is barely aware of what she is doing today. Of course, he knows she is in the first round of a cookery competition run by the supermarket where they shop, but she is sure he wasn’t listening properly when she reminded him of the details last night; nor when she paraded various outfits in front of him, his eyelids sinking before he excused himself and, with an apologetic smile, fell into bed. She suspects that he thinks she will be knocked out at this stage – an idea she has gently nurtured despite there being no elimination element to the competition. At least she hopes this is the reason he shows so little interest. His only concern is that Alfie, and the apparently effortless efficiency with which she runs their home life, will not be disrupted.

  ‘But what happens if you get past this cake round?’ he had queried when she had heard back from Eaden’s last week. ‘Who’s going to look after little Alf?’ Panic had suffused his even features. ‘I can’t help with childcare.’

  ‘Oh, I’m certain it won’t come to that,’ she had reassured him. ‘And if it does, I’m sure Mum or Ali will step in. You won’t be affected at all.’

  Oh, yeah, she thinks, as she nips across the traffic and into the side street that leads to Ali’s. If I get through this round there’ll be competition rounds every other weekend, and her mother, with various weekends away, her volunteering commitments and an Easter holiday booked, might not be up for looking after her feisty grandson after all.

  You might just have to do some parenting, she thinks, as she spies a tight parking space and parallel parks with the cool efficiency of a Londoner. The tank eases its way in expertly. She is somewhat surprised. Perhaps it’s a good omen.

  ‘Come on then, boyo,’ she says, catching her son’s eye in the mirror. His face is pale, his large eyes tremulous. His bottom lip quivers as he steels himself to cry.

  A ripple of weariness rolls over her. Perhaps she should cut straight to the bribery. She twists to face him. ‘If you let Mummy go off and do her baking, and if you play nicely with Sam, I’ll buy you a Lego helicopter.’

  Kathleen

  Well, it isn’t a gingerbread house.

  When George said he had bought her a house in the country her first, irrational thought had been that it would be a gatekeeper’s cottage: something turn-of-the-century, with gables, and scalloped cornicing and rich red bricks looking like gingerbread and softened with age.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that he would buy something so huge and – though she would not dream of saying this �
� so pretentious. And yet, if she’d thought about it, it was precisely the sort of monstrosity a grocer’s son would buy if he were trying to flaunt his recently acquired wealth and impress a judge’s daughter. She had sighed. She loves him because of his background – not despite it. So why does he feel this continual need to prove himself?

  ‘You do like it, don’t you, my dear?’ George, ever anxious to please, had put his arm around her as they stood in the grounds of Bradley Hall, the Gothic mansion he was showing her for the first time, and which he had bought for her birthday. A bead of perspiration pricked his brow.

  ‘Of course, my darling.’ She had kissed him on the cheek, and reminded herself that he hadn’t meant to be vulgar. He had only done this because he adored her. ‘What a clever surprise!’

  ‘I thought you would love it, you see,’ he had continued, as they had walked up the gravel drive towards some horrifying griffins. He paused, newly nervous. ‘There’s so much space. I could imagine you having the most fantastic study. Look.’ He gestured to a bay-windowed room on the first floor. ‘It has wonderful views. A room with a view. That’s what you said you needed, didn’t you? Or was it a room of your own?’

  He had flushed; and she had felt a rush of love for a man who had actually listened as she’d talked about Virginia Woolf, and who had read a novel by E.M. Forster, not so much for his own benefit – though he was frank about wanting to better himself – but because he knew it would please her.

  ‘A room with a view would be just perfect.’ She smiled.

  ‘If we want to publish The Art of Baking early next summer, you need to crack on with it rather.’ George the businessman suddenly surfaced: more earnest than her and – though he would never put it like this – more aware of her growing value as part of his brand.

  ‘I’ve finished cakes.’

  ‘You can’t write a book just about cakes.’

  ‘No … But I’ve made a start on biscuits … Then it’s bread; pies and pastries; puddings and, perhaps – though I’ve not decided – a final section on high teas.’