A Cake fit for the Occasion

Tonight is story-to-film night (I’ll explain later) and it’s my turn to make the cake. I wanted to make something nice and summery, and remembered Delia Smith’s classic lime and coconut recipes from way back. However when I Googled them, her updated recipe calls for coconut powder and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it locally. So I searched on and found two recipes which looked good – one from BBC and one from a proprietary brand of evaporated milk, yes Carnation of course, is there any other brand of same?

I took the two recipes with me to a lovely concert on Fri night at Dunfermline Abbey – Cappella Nova doing a formidably-well researched and executed rendition of mediaeval music about Robert the Bruce (start of Bruce Festival in Dunfermline). My friend Shirley is my culinary guru and she thought both recipes were feasible, with no hidden shocks. Then I took them to Glasgow yesterday for lunch with my friend Grace, who favoured the more elaborate of the two. So when I got off the bus last night I called in at the supermarket before going home to collect the requisite ingredients – limes, creamed coconut, dessicated coconut.

Alas, no limes. And further alas, no creamed coconut either – apparently it’s discontinued – why? Must enquire. Anyway I consulted the recipes again and decided to do the simpler one, with lemon instead of lime, as it didn’t call for creamed coconut. So much for choosing a nice seasonal cake, I bet Delia Smith never has this problem.

When I got to making it this afternoon I thought I might have copied it down wrongly because it contains NO SUGAR – apart from the icing on top. So I double checked and sure enough, this is a sugar-free cake. I thought there might be sugar added to both the dessicated coconut and the evaporated milk – but there wasn’t.  So let’s hope it goes down okay.  Our little group of friends have all been reading ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad and will tonight be watching the film of the story – ‘Apocalypse Now.’ So if the cake’s a disaster I’ll claim it’s Apocalypse Cake, specially created for the occasion. The recipe incidentally was really easy – link provided – and I’ll let you know how it tastes but hope it’s good because it would be an easy addition to my very small and rather rustic cake repertoire.

And I can’t resist adding the famous little Carnation milk poem which was written by a woman who had worked hard in dairies all her life and entered it for a slogan competition:

Carnation milk is best of all,
No tits to pull, no shit to haul;
No buckets to wash, no hay to pitch,
Just poke a hole in the son-of-a-bitch!

Dunfermline on the pilgrim route

I’ve  just entered a competition where the brief was to write 250 words on the theme ‘My Town’.  Believe me, 250 words isn’t enough, even for a quiet wee place like Dunfermline.  I kept it strictly 11th Century in tone and told the story of Malcolm and Margaret – how she wasn’t that keen on this rough, illiterate (albeit royal) boor, but he kept on at her and eventually she gave in; and civilised him.  She also apparently brought European influences to Scottish church life – she’d been instructed by the Benedictines and believed ‘Laborare est Orare’ – work is the best form of prayer.   I fondly remember pushing a pram up Monastery Street – maybe it was post-natal hormones but I could have sworn I heard the monks chanting and smelt their porridge!  Anyway, today being such a lovely day I took a quick run up the town for some photos, and attach one here for you.   I didn’t hear the monks today; my hormones must be all better now.

Somebody told me once about a ‘Society of Margarets’ – every Dunfermline woman called Margaret gets to join, in honour of QM/St M.  But I can’t find anything about it on the Internet.  Does anyone else know anything about this?