The Art of Baking Blind

by Sarah Vaughan

  Now, she picks up her copy of the Collected Poems and turns to that poem with its celebration of sexual love. The book opens easily on this page, as though it has been read more than any other.

  ‘This bed, thy centre is,’ she reads.

  And it really is. It is the centre of her world.

  Puddings

  Who can resist a proper pudding? The sort of gooey, comforting pud that is as British as a rainy afternoon in February and is its perfect antidote.

  We have a tradition, in this country, of steamed puddings: steamed apricot pudding, steamed gingerbread pudding, syrup pudding, Baroness pudding, or nègre en chemise, the French take on a chocolate and almond steamed pudding. We slather them with cream, for a treat, or a custard or raspberry sauce, and delight in their soft, warm stickiness.

  Then there are the baked puddings. The milk- and egg-based desserts of our childhood: junkets, Old English rice pudding, egg custard, which soothe like a hug from a plump and pear-drop-scented granny. Next, the bread or suet-enhanced ones with which the economical cook can fill her family with her canny use of leftovers: bread and butter pudding, plump with egg custard and dried fruit, enhanced by a little orange zest; baked sultana roll with suet; apple Charlotte; rhubarb Charlotte; brown Betty; queen of puddings.

  When the strawberry season is in full swing, or the apple trees are drooping with fruit, the careful cook can turn to fruit cobblers, apple hedgehogs or summer puddings. Gooseberry or rhubarb fools are a creamy treat. But, when summer dies, the family cook turns again to the comfort of a blackberry and apple crumble, nutty with butter, drenched in double cream.

  Delicious though these puddings are, there will be occasions when more sophistication is called for. And then the clever baker can bring out the dinner party delights: lemon meringue pie or apple amber, decorated with angelica and glacé cherries; the French classic vacherin, a divine confection of meringue, cream and chestnut purée; a bavarois of raspberry, coffee or chocolate; crème caramel, crème brûlée or our own Cambridge cream.

  It has become fashionable for women, worrying about our waistlines, to spurn such puddings, preferring a sliver of fruit or a Ski yoghurt, now available at any Eaden’s store. But our husbands and children still hanker after a proper pudding – and feel cheated if we deny them. Make sure you serve one truly decadent pudding a week and watch them enjoy every last, creamy mouthful.

  Kathleen Eaden: The Art of Baking (1966)

  28

  Very small children love to devour milky, creamy puddings. Reminiscent of their mother’s milk, these are the easiest of nursery foods to guzzle and to bake. But do as the French do and try to develop their palates early. A three-year-old will demolish a white chocolate mousse or a chocolate soufflé.

  ‘Alfie, I said no. Not now.’ Vicki is feeling frazzled as she assesses her chocolate fondants, probing the sponge to see if the right amount of chocolate oozes out.

  ‘Mummy, choc choc. Choc choc for Alfie.’ Her three-year-old is tugging at her leg with surprising ferocity as she ignores his entreaties.

  ‘No, Alfie. I said no. Mummy’s concentrating.’

  ‘Mummy, choc choc. Please, Mummy.’ Alfie is insistent. His bottom lip begins to wobble and his eyes fill in preparation for tears.

  ‘Can’t you just go and play for a bit?’ Vicki’s voice feels close to a snarl as she turns to address her boy. She softens as she takes in the crestfallen toddler and feels immediate guilt at her harshness. She would never have spoken to a pupil that way.

  ‘I’m sorry, lovely, but I’m busy. You can lick the bowl in a moment – or we can make something together – but just now I’m trying to work something out.’

  The bottom lip juts and rage and frustration coalesce in his small face. ‘Alfie wants choc choc. Alfie help you.’

  ‘Alfie, I’ve already told you. This is tricky. Mummy needs to do it on her own.’

  He remains unconvinced, tugging at her jeans pocket then slipping a small hand under her top and trying to touch her puckered stomach. How would she deal with him if he were a difficult pupil?

  As a last resort, she would suggest he see the only male teacher in the school, the year six teacher: older, taller, more experienced. More authoritative in every way. With a sigh, she removes his small hand and flounces to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Greg?’ She barks her husband’s name, a single syllable packed with resentment.

  ‘What?’ His voice drifts from the bathroom.

  ‘Are you finished yet? I need some help here.’ Bloody hell, she thinks, kicking aside some Lego then wincing as she stands on a small piece. Where is he when I need him? Still having a shower after his Saturday morning lie-in.

  Five minutes later, her husband emerges, as bouncy and refreshed as a Labrador puppy. His towel-dried hair is tousled, his eyes bright after sex followed by a decent night’s sleep.

  She, in contrast, feels weary. She has been up since six, trying to practise spinning caramel into baskets before Alfie woke up, and she has made chocolate fondants since giving him breakfast. Her hair, scrunched up in a hair band, is greasy and her body, clad in pyjamas that now need a wash, clammy with their juices and the scent of this morning’s baking. She longs for a revitalising, cleansing shower to wash away her stickiness; and a triple espresso made by somebody else – ideally a barista in a city centre coffee shop devoid of toddlers – to kick her into shape.

  She glances at the photo of Mrs Eaden, with her mixing bowl, and feels an unfamiliar twinge of resentment. Did you ever feel like this, Kathleen? She very much doubts it. How did you find the time to cook so expertly when you had a small child? I know you stopped writing before you had her but you still carried on baking – and playing on the beach, and surfing and flying kites. That interview, with your daughter Laura, was full of it: this idyllic childhood in which you managed to be both parent and ever enthusiastic playmate, painting with her, cooking, sewing. Creating homes in her tree house and doll’s house. How did you manage it? She sighs. You were evidently much better at multi-tasking than me.

  ‘You all right?’

  Greg looks unnaturally, frustratingly healthy. A scrubbed face, pink from a hot shower and a good shave; a close-fitting jumper he can just get away with; a springiness to the way he moves around the kitchen, creating more clutter as he fills a glass with orange juice and fails to put the carton back in the fridge; pops a bagel into the Dualit toaster, leaving the packet out of the bread bin; switches on the coffee machine.

  ‘Just a bit knackered. I’m finding it hard to get everything done with little Alf here.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Greg remembers he has a child.

  ‘I put him in front of CBeebies.’

  ‘Vicks…’ The syllable is suffused with disapproval.

  ‘What? He hasn’t watched any yet this morning and I needed to concentrate.’ She folds her arms across her chest, aware she is being defensive and hating herself for it.

  ‘It’s only nine thirty. Of course he shouldn’t have watched anything yet.’

  ‘Well, lots of children are dumped in front of it as soon as they wake up to give both parents a lie-in.’

  ‘Who?’ He is incredulous. ‘Well, that’s immaterial. My son’s not “lots of children”. We don’t need to bring him up by others’ standards.’

  ‘It’s very educational.’ She hears herself trotting out her excuses as he sweeps from the room to rescue his son from the imagined depravities of children’s television. He doesn’t hear and she swears out of earshot, out of frustration at feeling in the wrong.

  She goes back to clearing up the detritus of cooking: putting packets of flour and pots of cocoa back in the cupboard, screwing up the 70 per cent cocoa chocolate wrappers, tossing eggshells in the compost bucket, putting butter back in the fridge. She wipes her index finger round the inside of the mixing bowl, sucks the sticky chocolate concoction from it then fills it with hot water. A sprinkling of flour is wiped from the surface; sugar and egg from the handl
e of the electric whisk.

  Alfie runs into the kitchen beaming, his hand snug in Greg’s. Her husband looks self-satisfied.

  ‘We’re going on an adventure!’

  ‘Are you now? Where are you off to?’ She bends down to address her boy properly. ‘The moon? To play with the pirates? I know, the jungle?’

  ‘Nope.’ Alfie cannot keep his secret any longer. ‘Legoland!’

  ‘Really?’ Vicki straightens up, looks Greg in the eye.

  ‘I’m doing some hands-on parenting for a change. You’re always complaining I don’t do enough of it. It’ll give you plenty of time to do your baking.’ He speaks without rancour but she feels he has scored a point over her. Mummy puts Alfie in front of the telly; Daddy whisks him off to small boy heaven with the promise of Lego goodies.

  ‘I’m not sure he’s old enough. I think we need to discuss it. I mean, it’s a massive treat and maybe I’d like to join in…’ Her voice peters away and she realises she is sounding churlish.

  ‘Well, you’ve just said you haven’t enough time to get everything done so you definitely haven’t got time to go to Legoland. Besides, it would be good for us to have a bit of boy time, wouldn’t it, Alfie?’

  ‘Yeah, boy time,’ repeats his son, though he looks to his mother for confirmation. ‘But Mummy come too?’

  ‘Oh my lovely, I’d love to.’ She is conflicted. On the one hand, she cannot bear to think of her beautiful boy experiencing a treat like this independently and she is incensed that Greg will receive much hero-worship for it; on the other, she craves some time alone – time to bake without someone vying for her attention; or to shave her legs without someone bursting into the bathroom and demanding that he float his Playmobil in the bath.

  Greg senses her indecision.

  ‘Mummy’s going to stay here to get her baking sorted. Then she can relax with us and have a family day tomorrow.’

  Vicki opens her mouth to protest.

  ‘Good plan? I thought so.’

  She bites down her anger at her enforced impotence. ‘Well, he’s going to need his rucksack and a spare set of clothes and his water bottle and some snacks.’ She flits around the kitchen, gathering up a packet of raisins and another of oatcakes, grabbing his Thomas water bottle and going to fill it, her frenzied activity disguising the fact she feels redundant.

  ‘No, he doesn’t. I’m sure we can get drinks there. Come on, Alf.’ He practically drags his son from the kitchen, bustling him into his anorak, and omitting to do up the zip, thrusting his feet into trainers.

  ‘He’ll need a pee.’

  ‘Do you, Alf?’

  Alfie shakes his head.

  ‘Well, don’t take his word for it.’ Vicki’s voice rises in exasperation. ‘He’s three. Of course, he’s going to say that.’

  Then: ‘Come on, Alfie. No pee, no Lego.’ She guides him briskly to the downstairs loo, lifts the seat, and stands guard as he manages to direct an impressive arc of urine.

  She cannot, of course, resist commenting. ‘You see, Alfie. You did need one.’

  She is aware that Greg is glowering in the hall, irritated at her taking over and at her pointing out that she was right.

  ‘You’ve got to let me be a parent,’ he mutters as she brings Alfie back and pulls a woollen hat down over his curls.

  Then: ‘He’s going in the car. He doesn’t need that.’

  ‘Bye, Alfie. Have lots of fun. Big snuggles when you get back.’ She forces herself to hold a smile on her face, desperate to disguise the tension to ease the separation for her child.

  Greg looks suitably uncomfortable, wrong-footed by his sharpness but inept at apologising. ‘He’ll have a great time. Sorry to snap – I just wish you’d stop mothering him all the time.’

  She laughs; a yelp of incredulity. ‘And how am I meant to do that? He’s my baby. I’m his mum. It’s in the job description.’

  He pulls her close and places a kiss on the top of her head. Murmuring into her hair, he sounds suddenly weary.

  ‘Well, perhaps you should do it less; or I should do it more.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Do you want a row about this? I am trying.’

  ‘I know.’ She gives up the fight and lets herself relax against his body. ‘I know. Have a lovely day. I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Try to relax – and get those puddings sorted.’ He grins at her. ‘You can do this, you know. Just write one of your lists and work your way through it. Be methodical.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘We’ll expect to gorge ourselves when we get home.’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ She manages a half-smile.

  ‘You’re great at puddings. Seriously. Don’t know what you’re worrying about.’

  She keeps the smile fixed on her face as she stands in the doorway, watching him strap Alfie into his car seat. The temptation to interfere; to take over with a brusque ‘Not that way: I’ll do it,’ is so great she has to hug her arms around her. She just manages to resist.

  Alfie presses his snub nose against the window, she imagines forlornly, and she breaks into frenzied waving.

  ‘Bye, Alfie. I love you,’ she calls as the car pulls off. Her waving feels almost frantic. She continues until the car has drawn out of sight.

  Then she closes the heavy front door with its original stained-glass panels and rests her heavy limbs against it, pausing for a moment before confronting the chaos of the kitchen.

  Stop all this mothering? She doesn’t know how to. And even if she did, she wouldn’t want to. Motherhood courses through her veins.

  Which is not to say that she will not enjoy a day to herself. A flicker of excitement works its way through her body. She has a whole day in which to perfect her puddings, unencumbered by anyone else.

  That’s a thought. She pulls out her phone and fires off a quick text to Jenny and Claire. ‘Practising puddings. Hope you’re OK and managing to do the same? Xxx’

  ‘Trying – with Chloe:/’ Claire pings back immediately.

  ‘Some done. Lots more to do,’ Jenny’s text reads.

  Better get on with it then. But first, she needs to wash.

  With a renewed spring in her step, she runs up the stairs to the bathroom and the oblivion of an uninterrupted shower.

  Kathleen

  March, and she is still in bed, still nurturing her baby. She counts the weeks: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Almost halfway through.

  Her stomach has swollen into a neat hard-boiled egg, petite but emphatic. There is physical proof that, this time, something is living. She wishes she could flaunt it. But no one sees her bump besides those welcomed into the sanctum of her bedroom: George, Julie and Mr Caruthers.

  Like a disgraced daughter, or a Carmelite nun, hers is a life of solitude. She does not mind. All her energy is focused on resting. On willing her womb to remain strong.

  She flicks through the society pages of Harpers and Tatler, noting old acquaintances, and feels only mild interest. Much of the time, those dos were a bore. The Beatles claim to be ‘more popular than Jesus’, and the Moors murderers are due to stand trial. She will not read the reports in The Times. Her child feels newly vulnerable: at risk in the world as well as in her womb.

  Propped up in bed, she rations herself to just half an hour’s writing, wary of what happened the last time she spent her days with a book on her knees, her pen hurtling across the page until her hand cramped. The words spill out in her assigned half-hour: afternoon tea is distilled in neat slots and she spends the rest of her long weary day dreaming up more.

  And then something happens that justifies such behaviour; that makes the caution, the isolation and the tedium worth while.

  Stretching out in bed while re-reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, she feels a flutter so faint that, at first, she fears she has imagined it.

  There it is again.

  At twenty-one weeks, her baby moves.

  29

  It does not matter what you bake
with your children though there is an argument for simplicity, and for tailoring the recipe to fit with their age. What matters is that you are spending time together: cosseting and nurturing them. Make the most of this when they are small for they may be more preoccupied with their education during the teenage years.

  Karen, in her pristine white kitchen, is creating a baked alaska: the sort of dessert she often thinks she most resembles if she had to describe herself as a pudding. Glossy and crisp on the outside; ever chilly at the centre. Utterly desirable; always surprising. Only the sweetness and the initial warmth ruin the analogy.

  Of course, it’s not the kind of pudding she would ever taste but she takes great satisfaction from the various stages: the creation of the Swiss roll, the hulling of the fruit, the making of the meringue – whisked over a bowl of simmering water until it is stiffly peaked.

  She has already made the fatless sponge: a tight roulade encircling home-made raspberry jam and then cut with mathematical precision into six two-centimetre-deep bases of light sponge. And now she places hulled and sugared fruit on top: blackberries, redcurrants and raspberries, which shine, ever jewel-like. She tastes just one: a raspberry she sucks on the tip of her tongue until the sugar dissolves away.

  For a minute, she remembers her mother, cutting herself a slice of Bird’s Eye Arctic Roll. A poor approximation of this most decadent pudding, with its piped strawberry jam and thin layer of sponge encasing a mass of yellow but, for Pamela, another Saturday night treat. More innocuous than the cigarettes and spliffs of her children. Almost infantalising. Wrapped in her small world of back-breaking work, telly and food, Pamela never asked any questions. Was she really so ignorant? Did she not know that Steven, charming but ever ruthless, was effectively pimping his sister? Or that Karen had initially gone along with it: desperate to please her brother, flattered to be in with his mates?