Why we’re in love with cake

Just before she walked on stage, a contestant from last Saturday’s The Voice said of singing: “I leave all my troubles behind and it just makes me feel really good.” There and then, both mum and I agreed that we feel exactly the same about cake.

It’s not just my family… I think we’re a nation united by a mutual love of cake – an obsession which far surpasses any other country’s feelings for a particular food. I’ve been baking for a St Albans Farmers’ Market cake stall for three years, and every month I’m overwhelmed by the city’s hunger for baked goods. I even sustained a nasty scratch on my hand last summer, when a zealous customer violently lunged in my direction to grab the last tea loaf.

In fact, some say that our huge appetite for cake is actually making us ‘hairier’ as a nation. Hmmm. So why do we love cake so much?

Nostalgia

Trying to flog a new recipe on my Farmers’ Market stall is painful. Why? Because (almost) everyone wants something they’re used to, something that makes them think of home, or being a child, or feeling safe. “My grandma used to spoil me with a homemade Eve’s Pudding every Saturday when I was a child,” one of our regulars, Kate, told me. “Now whenever I eat it I feel all cosy inside!” Kate buys two Eve’s Puddings (pictured here) – a layer of stewed apple topped with sponge – every month, and she’s not the only one to part with money for the sake of a memory. Our oldest customer Stan has bought the exact same type of tea loaf every month for 25 years, thanks to long-standing baker Ruby, who is one of four on my stall and who still churns out them every month despite turning 90 soon.

Eating a cake that used to make you happy back in the day is perhaps the easiest, quickest way to tap into comfort nostalgia.

Affordable and small

Food industry expert Jane Milton recently launched The Cake Awards to ‘celebrate the very best British cakes’. It’s a unique opportunity for everyone from supermarkets to tea shops, and wedding cake specialists to wholesale bakeries to enter their masterpieces, and I was lucky enough to be one of a dozen or so guest judges. The results are a secret just now, but you’ll find out who won on 17th July.

Jane, who used to run her own chocolate brownie business, thinks loving cake is ingrained in the British psyche: “There’s always been an enthusiasm for cake and no more so than now, which is why I wanted to start the awards this year. In a time of austerity, a little bit of cake is one of life’s few affordable pleasures.

"'A little bit' is key to the popularity of cake, too – it’s a sweet treat which we can control in terms of portion size, so we can enjoy it without feeling too guilty. Restaurants and the like are tapping into that now – Harrods Tea Room serves an amazing 1.5 inch square Victoria Sponge, and after eating it I really felt like I’d had a whole cake.”

TV's role

The Great British Bake Off has also made baking cool. Everything about the show – quaint tea tents, Mel and Sue presenting, the legendary Mary Berry and silver fox Paul Hollywood judging, a little bit of history, shots of the countryside – appeals to the British audience (from series two onwards, the final episode pulled in over five million viewers), and all three winners have disproved the stale stereotype that only older women are allowed to bake. Indeed, series one winner Edd Kimber and series three winner John Whaite (pictured left) are, obviously enough, both men. And both were in their very early twenties when they were crowned best amateur baker in Britain.

Famous faces such as ex-model Lorraine Pascale and her Baking Made Easy series have helped boost the trend, as have shows including: Eric Lanlard’s Baking Mad; Kirstie’s Handmade Britain; Ace of Cakes; Choccywoccydoodah; Rachel Allen’s Cake Diaries; Martha Bakes; Mary Berry Bakes; James Martin’s United Cakes of America… the list is endless. Lovefood HQ is swamped every week with new baking cookbooks from such series as these – we get at least twice as many sweet cookbooks as we do savoury.

Something for everyone

Jane Milton says manufacturers have quickly responded to the craze: “The home baking section in the supermarkets has boomed over the past couple of years,” she said. “Five to six years ago it was shrinking, but now you have companies such as Silver Spoon bringing out all sorts of sprays, toppings and sprinkles to decorate cakes. Obviously, more people are realising that home baking is not as hard as it sounds.

“Plus the cake mix market is growing. Lots of supermarkets now have their own cake mix ranges, whereas before you were limited to something like Betty Crocker, or maybe a Disney fairy cake packet. Using cake mixes is definitely an entry point into baking for a lot of people – it means you can create a ‘cake’ without needing special tins, weighing scales, or different types of flour.”

This is why Jane decided to include a ‘Bake at Home’ category for the Cake Awards, for companies which make the best dry, wet, or part-baked cake mix sold for home cooking. Indeed, a while back we taste tested a ‘half-baked’ coffee and walnut cake mix (pictured above) against shop-bought and made-from-scratch versions, and found that it scored a surprisingly high mark.

For more serious bakers, there are Clandestine Cake Club branches springing up all over the nation, where home bakers share their wares. It seems we truly have gone bonkers for baking.

Why do you think cakes and baking are so loved by the British? Or are you one of those few who don’t like cake? Share your thoughts in the Comments box below.

Eve's Pudding photo courtesy of David Gilbert

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