The World of Cake

I have well and truly fallen off the slimming world wagon.  I love my Ted Baker dress, but it’s the only thing in my wardrobe that doesn’t fit me and frankly it’s hard to resist the lure of a thousand cakes just because I need to lose half a stone to get into my frock.  I thought it would be enough motivation but it isn’t.  Things that don’t help are the fact that I am nearly always knackered, and you have to plan and think to make Slimming World work, two things which require energy and concentration, both of which I don’t have.  It is also the summer holidays and I don’t see why I should be denied cake whilst trying to entertain three midgets and keep up with the day to day household chores without going mental.  I am just not motivated towards dress.  I am motivated away from boredom toward cake.

I made rock cakes with the kids on Monday.  They’re really easy to do.  I recommend them highly as a method of keeping small children engaged in activity.  The best thing about them is that you don’t need to make them look pretty.  There is no primping and preening involved, which is good because small children loathe and detest neatness and order of any kind.  They like mess, great glooping dollops of mess and destruction.  Rock cakes are meant to look like rocks, which means they’re allowed to look messy.  Neat rock cakes are positively frowned upon.

If you use Tana Ramsay’s recipe book for rock cakes (I know she has two books. I think it’s the second one), you also get to mix the cake dough/mix by hand as well.  This is also excellent for small children bent on stickiness.  The only downside of Tana’s recipe for our family is that I’m the only one who likes raisins.  It is easily resolved by the fact that I replace the raisins with chocolate buttons or in fact any form of chocolate.  This way the children will actually eat what they make, which saves my waistline slightly.  Not much, but slightly.  I also do this switch with jam tarts (Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Family Cookbook for jam tart recipe).  I don’t like jam, neither does my middle daughter.  We make some with jam for the jam liking fraternity.  We make the rest with chocolate spread.  It works beautifully.

Anyway.  We made a lot of rock cakes on Monday.  There were three children and we made three entire lots.  The kitchen was brimming with rock cakes.  It smelled delicious.  The children have been away at their dad’s house for twenty four hours, in which time I have eaten quite a lot of their rock cakes.  It was a charitable thing.  I didn’t want them to go off.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.