Cakes

If bread is the staff of life, then cakes must surely be counted as one of life’s great blessings ... proper symbols for festivities, feasting and friendship. “That takes the cake” is an expression from my early childhood, a hangover, no doubt, from almost a century before, when a giant cake was given as the prize to the winners of the Cake Walk-a popular dance and a competition held in the American Deep South.

At different periods of history, cakes have been credited with everything from deciding political fates to starting a revolution. Today they can be criticised only for adding an extra inch or two to our long-suffering waistlines. And if it becomes necessary one day to choose between a delicious chocolate or coconut cake or taking in a notch in my belt, I am afraid that I will “take the cake” every time.