A cake for mum

Contains cake, chickpeas, kale, creme chiboust... and a parenting tip from my mum.

My mother always maintained that the concept of ‘quality time’ meant nothing to children. I can’t remember the context of her saying this - perhaps she’d heard a radio interview? - but I distinctly remember her saying that children weren’t at all interested in intense periods of focused parental interest.

What they wanted, she said, was to be able to call out ‘Muuuuuum’ and to know that a voice would answer from somewhere within shouting distance. I guess that actually depends on the child (not to mention the parent), but since she had plenty of parenting experience I always took this statement as the gospel truth.

Me and my mum (and some seriously 70s wallpaper)

I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week during the annual bombardment of Mother’s Day advertising. It’s 14 years since my mum died and so her absence is less brutal than it was. That doesn’t mean that I don’t miss her, but more like it’s an old injury that flares up in certain circumstances rather than an acute condition that stops me from getting out of bed in the mornings. Maybe that feeling, of being able to call for your mother and know she’ll be there, never leaves us.

Hey, my mama was right all along (mostly)

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My mother must have made hundreds of cakes in her lifetime, but I only really associate her with two of them. One is a Peta Mathias’ recipe for a chocolate and fig-studded number, a great big exclamation mark of a cake that weighs a ton. The other is this one, which uses a whole lemon and lots of dates (we always had lemons, for G&T purposes, and my dad loved dates). It’s rather more unassuming, but no less delicious.

When we were clearing out my parents’ house I was desperate to find this recipe, which eventually turned up in one of her folders of recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines, along with notes in her loopy cursive handwriting. I remember the first time Mum made this (and many subsequent times, including the one when she realised as the cake went in the oven that she’d forgotten the baking soda. The cake was mostly unharmed.) During my ‘between food processors’ phase I developed a terrible craving for this cake, because it’s really hard to make without one. It’s not impossible, but it’s much easier with Mr Magimix or whoever doing the heavy lifting.

There’s a chance this could be an Elisabeth Pedersen recipe, based on the newspaper font and age of the clipping, but in Mum’s book it’s just called ‘Mary’s Date and Lemon Cake’. Mary, wherever you are, I salute you. I’ve made a few small changes to your recipe, mostly streamlining the method to make it easier to follow. Please note that you can substitute Greek yoghurt for sour cream.

Mary’s Date and Lemon Cake

Makes 1 x 24cm round cake, serves 2-10

1 lemon, quartered, pips removed
1 cup dates, roughly chopped
100g soft butter
100g caster sugar
75g brown sugar
2 eggs
200g plain flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup full fat Greek yoghurt (or sour cream)

Heat the oven to 180C and grease and line a 24cm tin.
Put the dates and lemon in a food processor and whizz until they form a finely chopped mushy mass. Warning: this will be noisy. Scrape into a bowl and set aside.

Put the butter and sugars into the processor and whizz until light and fluffy. With the motor running, crack an egg through the feed tube and whizz until well combined. Stop the machine, scrape down the sides, and repeat the procedure with the second egg.

Add the yoghurt/sour cream and the date mixture. Whiz briefly to combine. Lastly, add the sifted flour and baking soda and pulse until mixed.

Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and bake for about 35 minutes, until a skewer plunged into the middle comes out clean. Let it sit in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn it out on a rack to cool.

Lemon Icing
This is enough for a generous coating (which is to say, you can eat a few spoonfuls and the cake won’t suffer). I’ve topped the cake in the photo with a handful of chopped pistachios (hey, it’s nearly Mother’s Day!) and some lemon zest.

2 Tbsp soft butter
1 2/3 cups icing sugar
2 Tbsp Greek yoghurt/sour cream
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon juice (or more, according to taste)

Put all icing ingredients in the (rinsed out) processor and whizz until smooth and fluffy. Slather over the cake when it’s completely cold.

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Good Things

Chickpeas image by Natalia Blauth for Unsplash

A winner chickpea dinner

I don’t think I’ll ever be one of those people who spends all day Sunday batch-cooking for the week, but I have stumbled upon this brilliant Anna Jones recipe that you can make while prepping something else. The key ingredients are pretty basic - kale, chickpeas, tinned tomatoes (I actually found it by googling those three ingredients) but they’re enlivened by turmeric and preserved lemon, plus a dollop of yoghurt and harissa to finish. It’s relatively cheap to make and you can get creative with substitutions. It was a hit in my household, feeding three of us for dinner and then two lunches.

Margot’s Got Money Troubles

Michelle Pfeiffer! Nick Offerman! Elle Fanning! Greg Kinnear! Some critics have been unkind about this charming Apple series, but I’m completely in love with it. Margot (Elle Fanning) turns to OnlyFans to pay the bills after having a baby with her (truly awful) English professor. Chaos ensues, etc, but it is the very best kind of chaos featuring Nick Offerman as her former pro-wrestler and addict dad, and Michelle Pfeiffer as her former Hooter waitress mom. Plus, Nicole Kidman turns up as a pro-wrestler-turned-lawyer. Suspend critical thought while watching and just enjoy the ride.

Sift

Not for one minute am I suggesting that you rush out and buy this for your mother for Mother’s Day… but if she’s legitimately keen on baking then this is a brilliant gift. Nicola Lamb (of Kitchen Projects fame) expertly dissects the science of baking and then shows how to use this knowledge in real-life scenarios. I was transfixed to the point that I read a paragraph aloud to my husband one night about various sorts of pastry cream. (Admittedly, he was less interested in the difference between creme mousseline and creme chiboust, but I still think it’s fascinating.)

Hope you have a happy Mother’s Day or ordinary old Sunday, whichever you choose to celebrate,

Lucy x