Layer Cake by Tiffany Anne Tondut

alexandra pal

ace crumbling

on its upturned

bowl of green

& golden

mise-en-scène

its burns to think

how we first kissed

up here when she

was just a side

dish so i hear that

shes your lover

now u tell me how

youve moved into

a house so soon

well sugar i dont need

to know or hear

why it never was

us two ‘cause some

times lovers never jam

oh now youve got

engaged to her?

thats news to me i lost

my new fur stole

btw it must have

slipped from off

my arm was stolen

by some sponger

on the street no

doubt some lady

tramp wrapped up

in my molasses

well if anything

i’ve learned that

nothing tastes

so tart as sweetness

lost so bitter quick

- its not the thing

you lose that hurts

its shitting

what youve savoured

& wont ever taste again.

Tiffany Anne Tondut has recently published her e-chap book The God of Love is Stained with Silkworms Ink. She likes her cakes hard-boiled, noir, with a tender twist.

Obsession by Helen Lederer

A cake once seen in shadows thrown

By sunlight on my counter clean,

Was ‘disappeared’ by hands unknown

And taken to a foreign scene.

No larder this, or biscuit tin

Played host to baked and loved up carbs,

Instead some hands of spite and sin

Did take my cake to other parts.

I saw the man, whose mouth of crumbs

Did prove his pleasure at my cake,

And I with fingers and two thumbs

Did shame this cake thief with a shake,

Instead of shame the cake thief shouted

‘Am off the diet – I am delighted.’

Helen Lederer is an actress, comedian and writer. She's possibly best known for her role as the dippy Catriona in the absolutely fabulous Absolutely Fabulous.

From Beyond the Cake by Jude Cowan Montague

Genoa Cake: No, do you?

He copied jokes and doodled

beside his wife’s recipes.

Marjorie and their children

popped up on the bottom

of shopping lists, butter,

tea, sugar and half an eye,

(page torn here)

enhancing instructions

with not quite half a pint

of the departed.

Macaroon Tartlets,

Paisley Jam Sandwich No. 2 for 8 persons,

Fereneze Cakes, time 1 hr,

Bristol and Cocoanut Cake.

In a mottled cutting,

folded, brittle as brandy snaps,

flattened in the front of her book,

a second recipe lurks,

from a talk by Miss Guy

(another Marjorie) on August 20 (193?),

for Manchester Macaroon Tartlets.


Jude Cowan Montague's 'For the Messengers' is on Donut Press www.forthemessengers.com and a forthcoming collection 'The Groodoyals of Terre Rouge' will be on Dark Windows Press.

I Feel Like Cake by Elli Woollard

Sit down, don’t frown, yes – over here

You say you feel like cake, my dear?

You look a bit like cake as well

(A doc like me can always tell)

But don’t be sad, don’t look so worried

Diagnoses can’t be hurried

Let’s do some tests, let’s not be hasty

(Mmmm, your head is rather tasty)

What was that? You yelped? You cried?

(Lots of sticky jam inside!)

A muffled scream inside my tum?

(Sugar sprinkles, yum, yum, yum)

Now one last thing – just test these legs

Yes, yes, the chef did whisk those eggs

I’m right; there can be no mistake

A simple case of ‘felt like cake’

You can read more of Elli's work here. 

Make or Bake! by JT Welsch

These shows remind me
why I don’t cook.
Ah, nor do I make my own clothes.
The plumber’s here, singing
to the toilet. Now how
about a pie shaped like a toilet?

It’s like my piano teacher
used to say, (as if I didn’t know):
some people are born
to play the piano,
others to move them.
Which one invented cooking?

Was it like Eden, and we
had to distinguish ourselves?
Oh, but it’s so relaxing.
What do you have to worry about?
Soon, robots will free us
for higher pursuits.

There can be a show
with robot chefs, judged by robots,
loved by robots everywhere.
And you can relax,
knowing they’re there,
these tasks a foreign country.

JT Welsch is a lecturer at York St John University. His most recent collection is Waterloo.

A Portrait of the Artist with a Tea Treat Bun by John Canfield

on a St. Ives beach, circa eighty-two.

The palette used for conjuring this scene

is rain washed vermilion for the bathing hut,

trawler boat blue for the wind-whipped cagoule

and the sand is anaemic as egg timer grain.

But there in the centre, firmly clasped

between two hands, a bun the size

of a small boy’s head emits a seemingly

radioactive glow of saffron,

lurid yellow that emanates

like the Christ child’s halo in devotionals

or the fulgent beam of a Davy Lamp.

Then, bored into this bright yeast wall

are currants as black as Wesley’s gown

and as large and round as the fifteen besants  

on Kernow’s crest, an inversion of

the black and gold above Onen Hag Oll,

and encased in a shell that subtly shifts

with the light, like a gemstone, from copper to bronze.

Sunday brought grape juice and communion cubed bread

but on this day the taste of Methodism was good.

Forgetting of Things Past by Emily Hasler

It was two days before my 27^th birthday

when I had my first madeleine.

I had gulleted half before I realised

what it was; a sponge-shaped symbol

that I had yet to eat, yet had now ate.

I suppose I do not know if it was

a good or bad madeleine – apologies

to my host – but it deserved more

attention than I gave it and better

antecedents than those multi-pack

lunchbox fillers that fluff recalled,

which were all I could recall, are all

I can now recall. The mouth stuffed.

The contracted throat, narrowing like years

and flavours until I am not so sure

I did not – never? – ate this cake before.

Ever! Not sure we are not eating always

the same cake – iced again and re-trayed,

candles just traces of wax in hollow party hats.

Any old conch held so to your ear makes

a sound near enough like the sea. Near

enough. Shush. Eat up! My first madeleine?

It was two days before my 27th birthday. 

Emily Hasler's collection Natural Histories is published by Salt. 

Licking the Bowl by Sophia Blackwell

First of all, you need to get in there.
Put your back into it, every ounce
Of your mercifully unmeasured eight-year-old weight.
Someone else tied your apron, but
That doesn’t really matter. You’re the master
Of your afternoon estate. Yes, they said,
For tea, for a bit of peace, yes. Make another cake.

You need to cream it till it’s white and fluffy,
Your wrist the flexless neck of your hated violin.
You need your butter-thumbed Be-Ro baking book
Although you know your sponge cake like Hail Mary.
It’s a good-luck charm, that marked page. It’s safe,
The section for each cake the size of a psalm.

You need to sneak a bit of the crystal-blitzed mix,
Savour the salt of Stork against the sweet.
Your tongue leaves oily marblings on the spoon.

You need to leave a siege to show you’ve worked.
The sink banked up with carbon-dated layers
Awash in oily water. At this point
You’re losing interest, watching your creation
Borne to the humming oven by bigger hands.

You need to watch the clock till it comes out
And wonder- pointlessly, always- about this loss,
How it must end like this, and if it should,
Cool, gritty cream yielding to sponge and crust,
Your scraped bowl dully glinting like old treasure,
Your hunger blunt, and your unspoken doubt
That nothing- nowhere- will ever taste this good.



Sophia Blackwell is a performance poet and author. Her first novel,
After My Own Heart, was published earlier this year by Limehouse
Books.

A poem by Emma Hammond

babycake
my funny yellow fellow
slanty eyes astray
as you walk through the ashtray
with special fingers

burning creating fiddling
stroking
my heart in mouth
full of chicky pie

apocryphal desire
i will miss
your beanstalkliness
effortlessness
when you came around
and round

walking down milsom st
in the raining rain
ran
past incense and mobiles
the crippled flautist
we smiled
at the pretty girls
oh you girl pink friend

together we meander
two dead bodies floating downstream
and you never yap yap yap

you always conquer

Emma Hammond's latest book is tunth-sk. She blogs here.

A Circle of Seams by Claire Trévien

The bowl’s had its eyes closed for two hours

but we bustle around it

raid the fridge for spoils

filch the brut cider out of its box

aim its knuckle at the ceiling and spill

ourselves around the table.

We take it in turns to lather a breath

of buckwheat on the buttered bilig

laugh at the slits where the rosel failed

to needle the lace into a perfect circle of seams.

From my fist tumbles a pocketful of myrtles

to be thoroughly scorched, or not at all.

Claire Trévien's most recent collection is Low Tide Lottery. You can read more about Claire's work on her website.

Sonnet Review: The Great British Bake Off, BBC Two, Tuesday 4 September, by Simon Moore

So Stuart goes, as expected since week one,

From the imprecision of his Union Flag on,

He never seemed as up to speed as John,

Danny or Brendan, as he went along

Becoming ever more prone to disaster,

The limp bake, the missing taste, careless,

Till Berry flipped her terrible temper

At the death, quiet scorn heaped on meringue mess.

It crept: the fear of an ‘X-Factor’ freak,

The Wagner dragged through for ridicule;

Had unsavoury talent-show tics leached

To sour this gentlest of the genre, to Fool

The man? Victoria went, I feared the worst,

& worser still, ’pon another’s outburst.

Simon Moore writes Sonnet Reviews (sonnetreviews.tumblr.com), the world's leading 14 line rhyming review portal.

Editors' note: There's been a slight delay in getting this poem online, but it's still nice to reminisce about Bake-Off episodes past. Ah, remember that Union Flag cake gone wrong?

How do I love thee? by S Crooks

my baking heart

How do I love thee? Let me count the pastries.

I love thee to the millilitre and kilo and ounce my measuring scales can reach, when feeling a bit peckish.

For the ends of the shortbread supply and brownie tin.

I love thee to the level of a heaped tablespoon, or filled cup.

I love thee fervently as women crave chocolate,

I love thee softly as men sift flour,

I love thee with a passion for all things baking,

In my tentative showstoppers and childhood favourites,

I love thee with a zeal for pastry lattices and lemon and ginger millefeuilles. 

I love thee with mini rhubarb cheescakes and freshly grated nutmeg, and if we so choose,

I shall but love thee better after dessert time. 

Cooking With Marilyn by Angela Readman

And then I catch you, baking after midnight again,

mushrooming flour a nuclear cloud in your hair.

Elbow deep, you dive into a chipped bowl

to try on useful hands, fingertips dusted for prints

of mothers all over America making dinner

from the leftovers of their dreams.

There are so many snowmen you haven’t made,

standing on the hillsides of imagined lives women

in floral aprons salt away. This is it, this is the loaf

to save our lives, the one to show me how a wife looks.

Sweat on your lip, the condensation of a smile, you grab,

release, clutch and let go. Tongue in teeth, knead,

need the way you know men dream of working a breast.

I wait to be touched by floury thumbs. And you wait,

for the rise or fall, the moon at the bare window folded in,

again, the crescent of your ring cutting dough to heal like scar.

Angela Readman is a poet and short story writer. Her poetry collection Strip was published by Salt.

Quiche 22 by Gary Twynam

My wife once had a quiche disaster,
Inedible to beast or man.
I thought I'd help, and so I asked her,
"Do we have a back-up flan?"

A Plain Cook's Prayer by Kathy Pimlott

Deliver me from cakes who could do

with pulling themselves together –

torte, glossy, but with anxious leanings;

pavlova, whimsical and brittle.

Give me at teatime a Victoria,

smugly  glorious on its doily,

a stoical date and walnut,

a valiant  take-me- as-you-find me bun.

Let a lemon drizzle save me

from the melancholy of éclairs,

savarin’s wild despair, the quiet disdain

of violet macaroons.

O cakes of England,

rise and comfort me.

tbsp. by Judi Sutherland

In my mother’s kitchen there were no scales,
all weighing was done by tablespoon;
for flour and sugar, a perfect ounce
heaped as much above as there is below.

With baking-soda, eggs and marge
we’d make sultana scones, jam tarts,
sandwich cakes, not fancy, nothing requiring
the Be-Ro Book; all from memory.

Plain cooking, fit for a plainer life,
a recipe of expect the worst
in a stir of gossips, con-artists
and nosy-parkers, no-one you can trust.

She baked as she lived, liked only what she knew,
shunned the unfamiliar. I wish her life
had been ruled by the mantra of the mixing bowl;
as much above as there is below.

The Kitchen Goddess Genesis by Lucy Lepchani

On the first day She said: Let them be very, very light! And lo! She created the recipes.

 On the Second day She brought forth ingredients; amassed them in packets,
stacked them in blocks and on perfect ceramic dishes;
and assembled utensils shone amongst the cosmos.

On the third day, She separated the wet ingredients from the dry; then creamed,
and steamed, and beat, and whisked frothily,
and then weighed, sieved, grated, crumbed and added pinches,
folded the mixtures unto their own becoming.

The fourth day saw Her hands shape petit-fours, scatter star-cut cookies, roll cinnamon-wheels,
pour pale batters into smart cake-tins and non-sticks,
tip out the foam of the Swiss roll mix, spoon macaroons, fruit-up tartlets:
and the heavens sang in the glory of Her meringues.

And on the fifth, these things were baked to perfection,
optimum timing and temperatures, selected correctly.

On the sixth day they acquired their Holy scrumptious: eiderdowns of lovely cream and
a marzipan coat unto Battenburg, crimp-edged lemon-curd, red jam, or treacle tarts,
a summer pudding crammed with berries,
hundreds-and-thousands and glace cherries and sugared violets
nippling cup-cakes, brandy-snaps curled around Chantilly cream:
all of these wonders and more, set out on Her Glorious Doyleys.

On the seventh day, She scoffed lot;
and thereafter all humankind seeketh out
this perfection in Her Own Likeness.

Our blog makes the news! Thanks to all the bakers and tasters!

The wonderful Independent on Sunday was kind enough to put our blog on the radar!

Midday Tea by Jody Porter

A crescent smudge of flour
marks your cheek.

Sweet bright dust of summer’s baking hour
gives a clue of morning loaves,

and makes a promise of midday tea.
The snowdrift kitchen 

billows white with flocks of clouds 
about your feet. I like your hair like this:

tied back in messy bun with curls awry,
neatness gone by batches two and three.

I boil some water, arrange the cups.
You let the workhorse oven heave a sigh.




Jody Porter is Poetry Editor for the Morning Star. He blogs here and tweets here.

Dot's Specialty by Porky The Poet

With all due deference

To the people of Cornwall

My mum made the best pasties

Cold hands perfect for shortcrust

If not ideal for applying vicks vapo rub

She only makes them now if I ask her

But I haven't the heart to tell her

They used to be a lot bigger

On the other hand

Perhaps it was I

Who was just

Smaller.

How to make fine almond cakes by Imogen Robertson

                         
My husband is baking while Bill Evans

thinks his way through ‘Time Remembered’

and I become texture; ground sugar, and how

the mix sticks a little to his wedding ring.

He calls it alchemy and balances my humours

with rose water, coriander seeds. The cat

on my lap, its thin muscles tensing, heat,

the pressure of an idea working its way 

through the pap and fluff of my brain. 

Little almond discs tasting of the spice trade, 

eaten under a blue moon with white port, 

very cold, as we talk Apollo, astrolabes.

Imogen is a writer of historical fiction and poetry based in London. Find out more about her novels here. Before becoming a writer Imogen was a TV Director.

This Packet of Biscuits by Nicola Gledhill

is something I know I shouldn't open.

My mother always held an irrational fear

that we would run out of biscuits,

one that caused her to stock up on biscuits -

perpetual packets of Foxes and mint creams

for special occasions, requiring biscuits,

that never came. This packet of biscuits

is my fear of taking up too much space,

of losing my hipbones. This packet of biscuits

is only a packet of biscuits.

Nicola Gledhill comes from New Zealand, works in advertising, likes circus, cakes and costume.

Cake by Wayne Holloway-Smith

Wayne's pocket book Beloved, in case you've been wondering is published by Donut Press.

Mary Berry's Lashes by Michelle Madsen

Too rich, for one so well-baked

Unexpectedly caked in tarry crumbs

Of carbon black, Mary Berry’s lashes

Framing twinkles, glimmer cherries

Of ancient baking wisdom,

Steal the show

Bat-wings of approbation semaphore

Flashes of hot-scone glamour,

Glimmering treacle tart memories

Of how it was done in the 50s

Bake, rattle and roll

On an Aga, not a dancefloor

A second golden age, more

Home counties than Hollywood

Kitchen Aid your prop of choice

No call for hearing aids

To achieve the perfect bakers’ plait

Damask dimpled cheeks,

Choux buns steamed to perfection

Dusted with powder, a fine icing

Creased with disappointments

　

My buns have sunk

My sweetbreads are salted

Pastry as underbaked and wet as her mascara

And yet, through my dripping sweat

I see pity shining from her tiny eyes

A twitch of the neck, a shudder of pride

And she concedes that at least I’ve tried

Many have failed where you succeed Mary

Ghost of kitchens past, queen of cakes

An accolade from you and I’m baked

Michelle is the host of Hammer and Tongue Camden, the London arm of the UK's largest slam poetry network. She also runs and hosts I'm Sorry I Haven't Haiku and performs at festivals around the country.

Baking Scones for Eminem by Valerie Laws

Someone should be. Someone should be

Walking through the door with a heavy tray,

Steam rising from scones like puffball clouds

Golden and swollen, light as fluff, jam

Glowing ruby, warm as mother’s blood,

Primrose-cool butter waiting calmly

To spread and melt. And Marshall, he

Should be slouching on a suburb sofa

Which has seen better days and sticky

Fingers, and he should spring erect

At the scent of new baking as flour, fat,

Sugar make their music, and she

Will say, casually swiping his feet

In their box-fresh fuck-off trainers

Off the coffee table with a hand

Trained by years of nose-wiping,

‘Now now, Marshall!’ as she lets

The tray land like a spacecraft

Bringing peace to earth. Not me,

Even though my heavenly scones

Could save him, free him to sing

Of something more than money

And how crap his childhood was.

I’ve been there, done that

With the mothering, the Be-Ro

And the Stork. Still doing it. Still

Having different ideas about muscular

Younger men on sofas, even Slim

With his antimacassar of tattoos,

Though butter and jam could still be

Involved. Not me, then.

But someone should be.

Valerie Laws is a novelist, poet, playwright and performer.