Monday, January 28, 2008

She's nailed it

Lately I have been painting my fingernails almost daily. In a little round white leather case I keep close to me cotton wool, nail varnish remover, base coat, a file and polish. Keeping them neat makes me feel polished and changing the colour perks me up and styles me out.

My latest faves are a stunning shimmery red from OPI's Valentine's collection, gloriously entitled Log on to Love; Barry M's navy which is painfully untitled (only cruelly numbered, almost branded) and the battleship grey that Sophie Ellis Bextor wore on Buzzcocks. I think that might be one of Barry's, I must pick up a bottle asap.

I'd like my part time job to be official namer of varnishes - is there anything more wonderful than the fact that OPI called one of their beautiful blues Yoga-ta Get This Blue ["Make this deep dark blue your fashion mantra"]? Though when you look at the rest of the names of their India collection, the overall effect is - well, reductive, to put it mildly. Despite this, I am a total OPI convert. The brush is the perfect width when it splays out on your nail, and the drippy pigmented polish dries speedily and seems to be impatient-proof. The same cannot be said for my favourite NARS shade, Gimme Shelter, which tarnishes with fabric scuffs from my eggshell bedsheets, despite hours of drying. I blame base coat.

Of course, if I were a New Yorker, native or otherwise, I would not have a glimmer of this problem. Dashing Diva would be there for me, $10 impeccable manicures would be mine, mine, mine. Why haven't the Brits caught up? I think we'd rather be chipped, eccentric, a little bit grunge. Ew. The closest we get to a cheap mini mani on the go is Nails Inc, where they rarely think to suggest you pay before they paint, and where they hurry you out so you smudge. Shocking.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Bake Caking

Baking cakes for me is the purest but most indulgent of activities. My larder can always be found to yield a few ingredients, which combined in the correct way (after consulting the gospels of Delia, Mary, Nigella or similar)will give rise to a confection either springy or stodgy, light or lardy, tasty, fattening and perfect with a cup of coffee.

I'm quite good at making cakes as well. They tend to emerge from the oven smelling and tasting pretty nice and I have just enough patience to measure and mix with almost-precision and plenty of true cooking love (which perhaps helps, who knows?). I don't know if it's in the blood - my mother was a cake baker extraordinaire, producing fabulous fancies the like of which I haven't tasted since. So from when I was small I could be found in the kitchen with a too large apron tied twice around my middle protecting my little body - t-shirt to toes - from batter splatter, flour on my nose and a spatula in my hand. From my Mum I learnt all those mystic techniques which fox people who haven't spent Sundays magicking up fruit cake, banana bread and Victoria sponge. How to sift, fold, whip, mix, line, grease, preheat - most of it's ingrained now, and I can definitely produce a few baked beauties with no recipe at all, and perhaps even without scales - just a tablespoon and a careful eye.

Cakes I make are for sharing and that's part of the pleasure. A squidgy carrot cake for colleagues, Christmas biscuits for cousins and most recently an 11 inch fruit celebration cake for a very special little boy's christening. The latter being a different bowl of mix altogether - cooking for a crowd (difficult), baking for an occasion (pressured), and getting it right (a matter of pride), all combining to mean this was my biggest bake challenge yet. There's something incredibly special about making an occasion cake though, and so different from whipping up a Sunday teatime sponge. The process involves planning and shopping and measuring, calculations of time, quantity, weight - and a generous pinch of artistic flair. It doesn't really matter if a batch of scones look wonky, are different heights, have the odd burnt raisin stuck to their sides - dust with a little flour and the look is home spun and charming. Not so with a christening cake. This lad is only going to get one and if the fondant is marked, the royal icing smudged, if you spell his name wrong or ice an incorrect date - it's not just an imperfection , it's a disaster. And the look needs to be professional - home baked charm just doesn't cut it.

For this particular christening there were two babies, two halves of a family and two cakes. What I had on my hands, was a bake-off. When the cakes were laid side by side in the swanky hotel, I realised with horror I was 'competing' with a pro. Two storeys tall, little Thomas' chocolatey tower was a lesson in cake perfection - baby blue, topped with an extravagant bouquet of shimmery shiny firework like decorations, baby building blocks spelling out the new Christian name, letters perfectly formed - a delight. I shuddered and glanced over to my cake bungalow, with its hand carved H for Harvey and wobbly white iced cross. But nonetheless, I was proud of it. There had been times when I thought I ought to run to M&S and get a Bob the Builder circular sponge. For example, when I poured the mix into the intricately lined tin and it barely crept a centimetre up the sides and I spent the entire cooking time nervously thinking it would turn out like an enormous square Garibaldi biscuit. When I was in the cake shop buying the board and I couldn't remember the size and everything looked too big or too small. When I found the perfect shade of eggshell blue for the fondant and then knocked both bottles of food colouring over the beech worktop and cream units with one fell swoop of my rolling pin. When I couldn't seem to figure out which nozzle to use and when Jane Asher's royal icing recipe read like a secret wartime code - in all these instances £14.99 and a picture of Pilchard on top all seemed rather appealing.

But in the end every one of those moments was worth it. Maybe my fruit cake could have been a little more moist and my 'January' a little more straight - but it could not have been made with more love. When Harvey Bear's Mummy sliced into the cake and a bevy of raisins and cherries lay beneath the almondy golden layer of homemade marzipan I was really pleased as punch that I had made that contribution - and ever so eager for another wedding, christening, 21st - if only so that I can have another bash.

Not that I'm sentimental about cakes or anything.