I feel like at the moment we need to take our pleasures where we can get them. Not that this hasn’t always been true, just that in the present climate, so much is uncertain and sad and not quite what we were expecting, so that when the opportunity to make the most of a moment comes, we should seize it with hands and teeth, and savour every second.
This past weekend I went to the beach for a picnic. We have been in lockdown in Sydney for the past four months, and only recently have we been allowed to meet friends in the open air and sit down for a drink or something to eat. It feels like such an illicit treat, to clink glasses and smile at friendly faces and laugh in a group and watch the sun set. Such small and everyday things that we took so completely for granted a few years ago.
Anyway, this past weekend my niece Hopey cut her foot on an oyster bed while swimming, and had to go to the hospital for stitches. She is only nine, and she’s had her fair share of hospitals already in her short life, so the trip was pretty scary for her. We were all glad when it was over without any really dire news or other mishaps. She and her parents were meeting some friends at the beach that afternoon so they asked me to come along and have a drink, and to see so that I could make the obligatory impressed Auntie noises over her bandaged little foot.
I knew there would be a load of kids there, and that the friends they would be going with would also know all the other families at other picnics going on down there, and that they would also have loads of kids. We’re a small community, and everyone knows everyone. So I baked a big square chocolate cake.
A big fudgey one, the kind that you wanted for your birthday cake when you were small. One with loads of eggs and cocoa, and more sugar than I would put in a cake these days because we’re all supposed to have boring alternatives like coconut sugar or stevia, or no sugar at all. The sort of cake that makes you want to cram it all into your mouth and get crumbs everywhere and have it all over your fingers.
My boys are all grown up, and whilst they still wouldn’t kick a chocolate cake out of bed, they’re a little past chocolate cake excitement. So I made the cake for the kids to eat, but also because I knew I would have the pleasure of watching them all eat it.
By the time we all got to the beach, it was past 5pm and one of those beautiful Sydney spring daylight saving evenings that stretch out, golden and full of promise. The sun ever so slowly sinking, the sky painted pink and orange, the water hissing gently on the edge of the sand and the cicadas just starting up with the background music. The parents stood with glass in hand, barefoot on the grass while the kids ran wild on the sand and climbed the beautiful big gum tree that grows midway up the beach, with a springy branch for swinging from.
An hour or so later the kids were hungry but the parents not quite ready to pull up stumps and head home for dinner. Hopey asked for cake? Who am I to say no - I’m the indulgent Auntie these days, not the responsible mum. I’m sure that there were some mothers about who gave me the side eye at the potential ruining of the space for dinner, but we Aunties have no shame. I cut that big cake up into 25 chunky squares and let them have at it.
There were little girls with curly blonde hair and long chestnut hair and pigtails, in bikinis and denim shorts and frilly dresses, and little boys with big blue eyes whose bare chests were covered in sand, and board shorts or those hooded towels they all look so sweet in. And every single one said Please, and then there were kids running all over the grass playing tag and dancing and swinging on the gum tree, and all with big slabs of chocolate cake being crammed into their mouths, with crumbs everywhere and cake all over their fingers. And every single one said Thank You afterwards, and yum, that was the best cake.
Like I say, at the moment we need to take our pleasures where you can get them. Not a bad return for an afternoon’s baking.
PS There is no photographic record of the cake. It did not last long. I would have taken photos of the kids eating it but honestly it was way too much fun watching them to think of such things as iPhones.
I used Tom’s Chocolate Cake recipe from the book In Good Company by Sophie Hansen. Not my standard chocolate cake recipe but I felt like change and it's a very good one.
