Do you remember ‘the Twinkie
Defence’? This was the story of some lunatic who ran into the mayor of San
Francisco’s office many years ago and shot several people to death, including
Hizzonor. The Californian police, failing for once to shoot the ‘alleged
perpetrator of this heinous and unprovoked attack', carted him off to clink instead.
Well, the pesky defence lawyers got hold of him and discovered that he had munched
on a couple of cup-cakes before bursting through the doors of City Hall. Their
defence was based on this simple meal – the sugar in the cup cakes (or
‘Twinkies’ as the Americans call them) had gone to his head.
Imagine what he might have done if he had eaten an entire box of them.
Here in Spain, traditional cakes – found above all either at the village fiesta
or behind glass at the back of a roadside restaurant – are to be seen and
admired, but, at least until recently, never eaten. They would vary from the
ones created from sugar, flour, lard and some confectioner’s kreme, drizzled
with cheap honey, while the better ones might have had a glass of sticky rum
splashed over them to make them even more scrumptious…
No, I’m kidding. They were
(and are) horrible.
We had to buy one in the pueblo the other day for a child’s birthday. ‘Hapy
Birhtday to Jhonahton’ was lovingly picked out in vermillion paste across
the top of this monster. Luckily Jonathan isn’t much of a reader and failed to
notice the errata. He nevertheless picked up a valuable lesson after finishing
his second piece of the confection:
Always sit near the door.
At home, we disagree about cakes. I like a fruit cake prepared several months
before, stuffed with cherries and whatever else it is they put in those things
and covered with marzipan and icing, while my wife prefers something chocolaty
with nuts.
But the Andalusians veer from this, preferring to use oils and lard (that’s to
say, rendered animal fat) to butter. The best place to start with genuine local
cakes is at the village fiesta where you can admire a range of er, sweet things
usually covered in enthusiastic if incautious wasps. Ask for a media-luna
– a marvel of the cakemakers' art which is usually designed more for show than
for tell.
Other varieties might be tooth-breakingly
hard and maybe stuffed with ‘angel hair’, also known as sugared pumpkin mush.
The icing will be generous, but free from milk or butter. I think it’s fair to
say that the entire cake, built to both look good and to last during the
several days of the fiesta, should never be eaten on an empty stomach.
There’s a
notorious cake made in the south called Torta de Chicharrones. it’s
made with pork-fat, flour, yeast, an egg and small chewy bits which turn out to
be chicharrón – pig’s crackling.
The best time for cakes
(apart from during the village fiesta), is the Christmas Season which brings polverones,
which are cookies made of crushed almond-dust. The also popular roscones
are round cakes made with cream, milk, sponge, with bits of angelica root and
other dried fruit and they will follow the erstwhile British custom of the
sixpence in the mix by putting a small metal virgin or the representation of
one of the three kings, a collectable, somewhere in the confection.
A fashion no doubt introduced
by dentists.
In all, Andalucía, under the control of the Moors for many centuries, enjoys
something a bit heavier than a sponge cake covered with icing. The usual
fillings (which in Morocco or the Middle East can be quite delicious) include
dates, nuts, dried fruit and lashings of honey.
But the most likely place to
find a cake is with one’s breakfast. We have ‘Napolitanas’ which are
buns filled with cream or chocolate. They vary from warm and good to dry and
old. You can dip them in your coffee – sometimes, indeed, you are obliged to.
The most popular bun is the ‘Madalena’
which is a simple and rather tasteless sponge scone. Well, spongy anyway. It
comes wrapped in plastic. The ‘Cruasán’ is the Spanish croissant, made
with pork fat rather than butter. Not very good as a rule, especially when it’s
been on the cake-shelf for a couple of days. There are a few brand-name cakes
in their eye-catching packets, chocolate Swiss-roll types of things, including
a frightening looking pink one called ‘Pantera Rosa’ which I both
imagine and hope is banned in the Greater San Francisco area.
Lastly, the ever popular
and industrial doughnut, the ‘Donut’, which comes in assorted flavours
and a truly alarming collection of chemicals, food additives, colourings,
flavourings, preservatives and conservatives. Personally, I love ’em.
It's hard to escape the fact
that the best places where lumps of sugared sponge-drops are served with your
coffee are usually heavily patrolled by diabetic sparrows, destined to die at
an early age in a blissful sugar-rush.
As our area has enthusiastically grasped the nettle of the Twenty-first
Century, where you can no longer find a simple salad on the menu, or pig n’
chips without an endless complication of sauce and adornment (I had slices of
strawberry surrounding my lamb chops the other evening in a Mojácar hostelry),
so, too, our coffee shops have improved in the cake department. We have
Italian, French and British cakes, scones, pies and bonbons which are a far cry
from an earlier age when the aerodynamic ones were prized by discerning customers
above all others.
I think that the new trend started
with the introduction to Spain of the Italian tiramisu (a soft and
chocolaty little number).
The other day, I rounded off
my dinner with a delicious ‘Grannie’s Cake’ (‘pastel de la abuela’) – very
good it was, although packed with around 1,000 calories.
Cakes, ice cream (delicious in Spain), chocolates and sticky things in plastic
cups. I wonder if they have an effect. Perhaps they’re just there to make us
fat.