A Cake With Compassion

3rd July 2012 Tuesday

My husband’s office smells of new cut wood and sawdust. He’s happy with the six floor to ceiling shelves which our lovely carpenter has been building all day. When he’s gone home with all his tools, we sit down together to write a letter to the Tribunals office. We argue about using the word postponement. My husband says it makes him look like he’s got a big vocabulary and he’d rather use the word change. We don’t say our doctor has been on sabbatical - just that she has been away. I realise how much I miss mining the rich coal seam of nuance and distinction that runs deep in our language.....how I need to pare it down to its core when I talk with my husband. 

Later I sit with my sister in the kitchen and we talk the fine detail of vegan chocolate cake recipes - I’m making a birthday cake for a dear friend’s fifthieth - we discuss what to substitute in place of eggs - ground up flax seeds, in the place of butter - coconut oil or avocado, in the place of sugar - agave syrup, in the place of wheat flour - rice and quinoa flour.  This evening I experiment and adapt and bake a recipe for chocolate vegan cup cakes from the wonderful raw and vegan website A Dash of Compassion  which you can find at  www.adashofcompassion.com

When it comes out of the oven the cake looks dark and dense and smells chocolatey. When I cut a slice the texture is surprisingly crumb like but it has a slightly gooey sticking-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth feel to it. It tastes like a distant cousin of a chocolate sponge and what it needs is a rich ganache icing and lashings of cream.

But I’m not going to give up. I’m determined to mine the depths of the ultimate vegan chocolate cake for my friend’s birthday. And accept it can still be delicious but not the same as the original. A bit like my husband who is not the same  - just a different version of himself - without  big vocabulary. 

And I could see that as the icing on the cake.