Quote of the Day: On sugar-free baking...

Not remotely sugar-free cake

I gather that, on the Great British Bake Off they've been indulging the politically correct idea of baking without sugar. That is without the stuff that you buy in bags not without sweetness.

Here is Miss Whiplash a cake blogger writing about this indulgence:

What is not in question, however, is that there is any difference at all, from the point of view of "health" (meaning, in this case, how it acts in and with your body) between sugar from-a-bag (as prohibited in the episode in question), sugar in honey, sugar from syrups/nectars and, indeed, sugar from fruit (or anywhere else). Substituting one of these things into your cake may make it taste better (and will almost certainly make it different), but will not make it any more or less acceptable from a physiological point of view to anyone - there is nobody for whom this cake will be a more "better" thing, unless they happen simply to like the taste (or have some kind of ethical reason for not eating sugar-from-a-bag, perhaps). It is a pointless (if not actually fruitless...) exercise. 

There's a whole lot more on her blog. The point is important - this sort of anti-sugar message is misleading, unhelpful and, as Miss Whiplash points out as a T1 diabetic, potentially harmful. For me the most important point she makes is about how cutting out the sugar really misses the point:

Anyway, the point is that this cake would still be chock full of other carbohydrates (most commonly flour) which would, on eating, be turned to glucose extremely swiftly in the body, which would raise blood sugar levels almost as much as if it had been full of sugar in the first place. 

 And Miss Whiplash's 'sugar-from-a-bag-free' cake sounds good too!

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The most influential humans ever...and a Merry Xmas!!

There was a list - there's always a list. It claimed to contain the most influential people in history (but contained Elvis Presley and omitted Confucius - reminding us of American parochialism).

However (and you may disagree) the two most important humans - probably women - were those who invented baking and brewing.

Think about it - imagine life without bread or beer!

Have a good Christmas with plenty of beer, bread and pleasure.

Cheers!

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The gnosis of sticky rhubarb cake

I was considering writing a short – fully illustrated – piece on the wonder that is sticky rhubarb cake. But, as if often the case with these ideas, hunger intervened and the cake is reduced to scrapings. Showing you good folk a few crumbs left on a plate would be unnecessarily cruel, I fear. So you will have to imagine the glories of that cake – the crisp stickiness of its topping, the sharpness of the rhubarb and the soft sweetness of the sponge. That such mundane ingredients – sugar, flour, eggs, rhubarb – transform into such joy is one of life’s deep magical truths. I wonder – perhaps you do to – how we stumbled on the combination, on the idea of turning sweet sticky goo into soft, luxurious cake.

Was there some recalcitrant god or goddess of cake who Prometheus-like swept down from the heavens to reveal the truth of baking to a bemused and awestruck cavewoman? Or was The Book of Cake inscribed on golden tablets – now sadly lost to us – but fortunately transcribed and passed down through the generations? Maybe cake is a temptation of the devil whispered in the ear of that cavewoman – an artifice to drag us from the true path of sacrifice and salvation? Or a reward from the faeries!

Whatever the occult truth of baking, we can be pleased that we have its wonders around us (albeit for a very short time as connoisseurs of summer fete cake stalls will know) and that a vast collective of cake-makers has taken to the ether to spread the word. Indeed, there are times when it seems every single American food-blogger is presenting luscious cakes, buns and muffins – perhaps it is this epidemic of home baking that accounts for Yankee waistlines rather than the ubiquity of burger and chips.

So, dearly beloved reader, have faith in that rhubarb cake – it was real, it looked fantastic and…

…you can imagine how it tasted!

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