The Great Omicron Bake-off

 

How Covid-19 Taught Me to Bake Cake

 

I do not bake.

 

I can’t say I come from a long, respectable line of non-bakers: my grandmother was, actually, a legendary cake maker, but my mom was a terrible one, so I took it one step further by not baking at all. It’s just one of those skills, like, say, tennis, that I could get through life perfectly well without. I never missed it.

 

When I had my kids, at forty, and they started having kids’ birthdays, baking – for the first time – was on the agenda.

 

“Will you bake me a birthday cake?” my son would ask, big-eyed.

 

“No, but I can buy you one!” I’d say blithely, and we’d go to the supermarket where he’d choose his favourite cake, and all was good in the world.

 

Once the kids started going to kindergarten, baking – or more precisely, its neglect  – was no longer just my default mode: it was an ideology.

 

The kindergarten was in a gentrified part of Berlin, and was co-managed by millennial moms who seemed to have nothing better to do than craft elaborate origami icicles for Christmas, knit a fifteenth-century knight’s outfit for carnival and – of course – bake a medieval castle with ornate marzipan cannons. You get the picture. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than arriving at kindergarten events with my purchased contributions to the buffet: an antipasti assortment from the market hall in numerous plastic (yes: plastic!) containers, or a cake – which I would proudly present in the cake shop’s cardboard box – the more ostentatious, the better. It was my act of protest against the neo-domestication of the middle-class female – an argument which my four-year-old boy didn’t quite understand:

 

“Bake me a cake!”

 

“I don’t bake.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because I’m a woman.”

 

“But Sebastian’s mom is also a woman, and she bakes.”

 

“Bake with Daddy,” I’d say.

 

But my husband, although he does ninety-five percent of the cooking in our household, said that this was where he drew the line. Those were, in fact, his exact words: “I draw the line at baking.”

 

Hence, we turned to a third party: Dr. Oetker, who – to those who don’t know – is not a medical doctor or a couples counsellor, but a brand of just-add-water cakes. Thanks to him, my kids finally won the thrill of watching the oven do its magic, while I didn’t need to bother myself with recipes, ingredients and “Is this really what our moms fought for???”

 

Dr. Oetker also offered cake icing – microwavable and easily spreadable. Now, whenever we celebrated birthdays at home, as in a ‘70s commercial, a guest would exclaim: “Mmmm…who made the cake – you or John?” “Why, Dr. Oetker, of course!” I would answer, winking over my shoulder at an invisible camera.

 

The pandemic broke when my boys were six and three. My older son is an April child, so, despite the strict social distancing regulations, we were still able to get together in the park with another family on his birthday and enjoy presents, games and, of course, cake. It was a sunny day, with only thin clouds of worry reflected in our friends’ sunglasses as the children played tag on the grass.

 

My younger boy was not as lucky. Being a Christmas child is bad enough without a pandemic. You never get as many presents as you’d have gotten were the events further apart, and no matter what your parents say, it’s hard to feel you are at the centre of attention when seemingly the whole world is celebrating someone else’s birthday. By December 2020, we had relocated to locked-down UK, and our boy was allowed one birthday guest – his cousin Reuben.

 

“Can I invite more children next year?” he asked.

 

“Of course!” we replied with the confidence of wishful parents, “When Corona is gone you’ll be able to invite anyone you want!”

 

A year later – in the midst of the Omicron outbreak – we were relieved that he chose only five children, all of whom confirmed their attendance for the 27^th of December.

 

However, on December 23^rd, his older brother complained of an itchy throat and tested positive on the home kit.

 

“We’ll have to postpone the party.” I broke the news to the little one.

 

“Can Reuben still come?”

 

“I’m afraid not. It will be just us four…”

 

“Will we still have cake?” he asked with teary eyes.

 

“Of course we will!” I declared, then realised I’d have to bake it myself, having neglected to place a delivery before Christmas Eve….

 

Hence, on the afternoon of the 27^th, I Googled “basic cake recipe” and chose the one that boasted a five-minute prep time. I worked my way through the must-haves: flour – check, two eggs – check, 225 grams of sugar – check (doesn’t leave much for tea, but what can you do?), lemon – oh well, can be replaced with a clementine, half a block of butter – surely salted spreadable margarine is just as good…. Then I mixed it all in a bowl – and I can tell you that without a mixer it takes longer than five minutes – and shoved it in the oven. Thirty minutes later I took my creation out.

 

“Mom! Why did you make a pancake?!”

 

Indeed, despite the self-rising flour, the cake did not rise by much; in fact, it was as flat as a flat-thing, but in a stroke of genius, I folded it in half, significantly increasing its height.

 

For icing, I turned to an easy “5-minute” icing recipe from the same website. When it was all done, I created an expressionist portrait of the birthday boy using mini marshmallows from one of the many Christmas parcels the kids got, and voilà! – a birthday cake.

 

“What’s it like?” I asked the family.

 

“It’s nice, but a bit grainy,” said Father.

 

“Mommy, did you put sand in the frosting?” asked boy number one.

 

“Of course not!” I said, thinking to myself that maybe replacing icing sugar with granulated sugar doesn’t work after all.

 

After singing “Happy Birthday” and opening the presents, it was time for bed. Lying under his Hungry Caterpillar blanket in his pyjamas, my little boy, who’d kept on a brave face all day, looked suddenly sad.

 

“Did you have a nice birthday?” I asked him.

 

“Yes, but I wanted people to come. No one came to my birthday. It’s not fair.” He burst into tears, and my heart broke in two.

 

“I’ll tell you what,” I found myself saying, “from now on every day is your birthday until we can have the party, ok?”

 

“Every day?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“With cake?”

 

“With cake.”

 

After the kids fell asleep, I told my sister all about it on WhatsApp.

 

“You’ve dug your own grave!” she replied.

 

I woke up the next day to the sound of my youngest shouting at his brother: “I get to choose what we’re watching, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!!!”

 

OK, so he hasn’t forgotten…, I thought.

 

“What cake are you baking for me today?” he asked before we’d even had breakfast, “I want a strawberry cake. Can you make me a strawberry cake?”

 

“We don’t have any strawberries, I’m afraid.”

 

“Then banana cake – here –” and he fetched five bananas from the kitchen, some of which had seen better days.

 

If you think at this point I would Google a banana cake recipe – think again.

 

Instead, I make the same cake as the day before, only this time, before folding the flat “pancake” in half, I slice a couple of bananas and “sandwich” them between the two layers –there you go – banana cake! For icing, I melt a chocolate bar in a pan. “You don’t need to add sugar to milk chocolate,” says my wise other half as he passes through the kitchen, “it’s got sugar in already.” So I leave out the “sand.” Having run out of marshmallows, I decorate the cake with more banana slices – accentuating the theme.    

 

Once more, we light candles and sing birthday songs. Since we don’t have any birthday candles, we use leftover Hanukkah candles and, having no candle holders, we make sure we pull them out before they melt into the cake.

 

The banana cake keeps us going for a couple of days, buying me some time.

 

In the meantime, we keep testing, waiting for the second strawberry-coloured stripe to disappear from the white lateral flow test tray.

 

My son hates the tests: “I don’t want to do it!” he cries one afternoon “It’s not fun!” stating the obvious as I try to shove a stick up his tiny nostril for the millionth time these past two years.

 

“Nooooooo–!” and he runs up the stairs.

 

“But you have to – otherwise we can’t have your birthday party.”

 

At that point, we were still hoping to be able to hold the party on January 3^rd, the last day of the Christmas holiday. If all of us tested negative for “two consecutive days”, we’d be in the clear.

 

“I don’t like it! I don’t like the Corona test! I don’t like Corona!” he announces.

 

Desperate, I resort to something I thought I’d never do, something even more out of character for me than baking: I play the Middle Eastern card.  

 

Sitting on the stairs beside him, I say:  

 

“You know, when I was growing up, we didn’t have Corona, but we had a war. And for a few months, my mom would wake me up in the middle of the night, and we had to go to a special room and wear a heavy gas mask and that was also not very nice.” 

 

“I don’t mind going to a room in the middle of the night with a mask” he says sniffling, “I want to do that instead of a Corona test.”

 

Fair point, I thought.  “Shall we bake a cake?” I suggest.

 

Now that my husband’s family had dropped off some food essentials on our doorstep, I figured that I could make the cake thicker by increasing the amounts of the ingredients in the recipe: four eggs instead of two, for example. It was a light-bulb moment. I poured generous amounts of everything into the faithful bowl, not really minding the exact measures – what do they mean by “3 oz” anyway? The kids had asked for a “brown chocolate cake” this time, so I unceremoniously dumped three large tablespoons of cocoa powder into the mix.

 

When it came to icing, I realised I’d depleted my husband’s chocolate stash, so I melted some Christmas toffees together with the content of an assorted “Celebrations” box: I stood by the cooker and watched the mini Twixes, Snickers, Bounties, and Milkyways lose their shape in a brown goo. Then I spread the somewhat lumpy mixture over the impressive one-inch-high cake. I crowned the creation by placing five “Kinder Hippos” on top of the icing.

 

My masterpiece – “Hippos-swimming-in-chocolate-mud” – was ready to be presented to the family:

 

“Mmmm….caramel” said hubby.

 

“Tastes salty – like peanut butter,” commented the firstborn.

 

“No it doesn’t!” protested the eternal birthday boy, “It tastes of coconut!”

 

The “full-sized” cake lasted longer than its two predecessors, but so did our self-isolation. On January first there was still a faint-but-visible marshmallow-pink stripe on my lateral flow test, which meant postponing the birthday party to the next weekend. I sweetened the blow with yet another cake, of course.

 

A couple of days later the kids returned to school. With school friends and school puddings, the pressure at home eased up a bit, but Saturday was fast approaching, and four out of our five invitees managed to stay Covid-free and RSVP’d for the occasion – which had by now been way too built-up for a fifth birthday!

 

Come Friday, I asked in my sweetest voice, “Shall we go to the supermarket and choose a birthday cake for tomorrow?”

 

“No. I want you to bake a cake!” said my son, not even lifting his eyes from Thomas the Tank Engine.

 

Well, it was worth a shot, I thought. And when the kids were in bed, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

 

Everything that could go wrong did. Once more, the cake was too flat, and there wasn’t enough chocolate for icing, but by now I was a seasoned improviser and completely unfazed. I melted the meagre chocolate leftovers with remnants of Quality Street toffees, spread it, sandwiched it – like in the good old days – and left it overnight. On Saturday, I sprayed the cake with the entire contents of a squirty whipped-cream canister and sprinkled a bag of mini marshmallows on top. It was no longer a pancake: it was definitely a punk-cake.

 

I’d decided to invest in real birthday candles this time – mostly because one of our guests was a child from an observant Jewish family and I wasn’t sure how they’d react to the repurposing of Hannukah candles. The candle holders that came with the silver birthday candles were white and looked just like the mini marshmallows – in fact I spotted one such camouflaged plastic treat making its way to a tiny mouth just in time to fish it out of the cake. But apart from that near-emergency, everything went very well, party, cake and all.

 

One kid even asked to take a slice home. “There you go,” I said, packing the piece for her in aluminium foil. “Enjoy it. It is the last piece of my last cake!” A big, disappointed “Awww–!” came from the parents. One of them – a millennial dad, whose wife was down with Omicron in their guestroom – was still licking his fingers. But I was determined I should never ever bake again…

 

Until later that evening, when I tucked the boys in bed.

 

“Did you have a good birthday, baby?” I asked. And so help me God, he replied:

 

“Yes! And the cake was the best!” So it looks like we’re all in for another season of Baking Bad.