an after­noon at school

This post has noth­ing to do with Matthew Mac­fadyen. But I’m going to upload (or is it down­load? I can nev­er remem­ber which is which) one pic­ture of him per day until some­one reports back to me from the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val. So there.

What a day yes­ter­day at Avery’s school. I fran­ti­cal­ly wrapped up my straw­ber­ry cake and head­ed out to find a taxi. While I’m at it I’ll give you the recipe for this extra-fast, fool­proof dessert (believe me, I am a fool when it comes to bak­ing and even I can­not screw up this cake). Just for fun, I’m going to do this in cook­book style to see if I can. You all tell me how it turns out.

Avery’s Straw­ber­ry Lemon Sour Cream Cake

2 cups all-pur­pose flour
1 tsp. bak­ing soda
1/2 tsp. bak­ing powder
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 sticks but­ter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup sour(ed) cream
2 tsps. vanil­la extract
2 tsps. lemon extract
the grat­ed peel of one lemon
2 large eggs
6 straw­ber­ries, coarse­ly chopped
3 tbsps. extra sugar

Stir togeth­er the flour, bak­ing soda, bak­ing pow­der and salt in a medi­um bowl. In anoth­er bowl, cream togeth­er the but­ter and sug­ar. Of course, at this point all recipes will tell you about what speed set­ting to use on your elec­tric beat­er. Well, try plug­ging an Amer­i­can beat­er into an Eng­lish sock­et, and once the smoke has cleared and you’ve replaced all the fus­es in your flat, you can go back to stir­ring by hand like in the old days. It just does­n’t mat­ter. Just stir until the but­ter and sug­ar are glossy. Then add the sour cream, the extracts and the eggs and the lemon peel, which will smell glo­ri­ous. Stir real­ly well until the bat­ter starts to come away from the bowl as you move the spoon. Dump in the flour mix­ture and stir very, very well. You’ll notice that a bit of bub­bli­ness appears from the bak­ing soda, when you’ve stirred enough. Gen­tly fold in the straw­ber­ries, tak­ing care not to mash them up. Tip into a pan that you’ve sprayed with Pam. I wish I had a Bundt pan but I do not. It would be very pret­ty like that. How­ev­er, it is much more Eng­lish to have a sim­ple square or round cake that will fit in one of the tins with lids, so de rigeur in the Eng­lish kitchen, to have on hand in the larder when some­one comes to tea.

Sprin­kle the extra sug­ar over the bat­ter and bake at about 350 for about 45 min­utes, or until the cen­ter does not jig­gle and a knife insert­ed in the cen­ter comes out clean. Yes­ter­day I burned mine, which was prob­a­bly a com­bi­na­tion of not pay­ing atten­tion (hey, some­one has to blog!) and not real­ly hav­ing a pre­cise han­dle on the rela­tion­ship between cel­sius and fahren­heit. Oh well, I’ll get it right before I pub­lish my cook­book! I guar­an­tee you it will not take longer than 10 min­utes to put this cake togeth­er, and oth­er than the straw­ber­ries, you’ll have every­thing on your shelves already.

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So I zipped up to school, rel­ish­ing NOT walk­ing for once, and made my way down to the base­ment of the school to the dra­ma room (aka the din­ing room, and who knows what else in that space-con­strained school) where the bab­ble of fem­i­nine voic­es told me a cake sale was hap­pen­ing. Most of the desserts on offer were store-bought, some extreme­ly fan­cy from Paul, the ultra-authen­tic French patis­serie in the High Street, and some more obvi­ous­ly your basic Wait­rose cook­ies and cakes. So when I arrived with my unglam­orous, square, but unde­ni­ably home­made and still-warm cake, I was the star of the show! Nev­er mind that the edges were a bit too brown! They priced that baby at 15 pounds and it was snapped up imme­di­ate­ly by a Form One moth­er, but she was made to leave it on the sale table until the end of the after­noon, because the smell of real, fresh cake was boost­ing sales. Take that, all of you at home who know I am a hope­less bak­er. All it took was a cap­tive audience.

So I sloped off down the pas­sage to the simul­ta­ne­ous sec­ond-hand uni­form sale, and imme­di­ate­ly regret­ted every pound I had ever spent at John Lewis buy­ing these things new. Amaz­ing prices. I can’t imag­ine Avery’s clothes sur­viv­ing in such a con­di­tion as to be accept­able at some future sale, but per­haps these chil­dren have more than one set.

The con­ver­sa­tions I heard as I browsed around the tables were so… Eng­lish. “Have you plans for the Bank Hol­i­day, Ser­e­na? We’ll be in the coun­try, if Angus can get away.” “Well, Iso­bel, now that Pop­py is set­tled and ready to go to St. Mary’s in the autumn, how will your emp­ty house feel?” Their voic­es all oper­ate at a half-octave high­er pitch than Amer­i­can moth­ers, and their clothes all look dif­fer­ent: pat­terned scarves draped across their shoul­ders, lit­tle heels, dis­creet expen­sive belts and hand­bags. “I do think it’s hor­rid how these cardies shrink so in the laun­dry. This size 30 bears no resem­blance atall [all one word] to what it was when it was new.” And yet, as for­eign as parts of the after­noon felt, there was much the same gen­er­al feel­ing as at Avery’s old preschool: the atten­tion of devot­ed moth­ers, the super­vi­sion of devot­ed staff, the shab­by, slight­ly old-fash­ioned sur­round­ings. And tea tow­els draped all over the kitchen to dry: the King’s Col­lege annu­al fundrais­ing tea tow­el, with a self-por­trait of each school­girl and her name below, some­how repro­duced onto a tow­el! By the time we arrived in Jan­u­ary they were all sold out, but I have high hopes for next Christmas.

The uni­form sale room opened out into the sweet lit­tle play­ground, home of the famous Wendy house (there were spi­ders, it’s true) and looked up into the win­dows of the flat whose occu­pants, it turns out, are the real bar­ri­cade between the girls and a prop­er out­door recess. Why on earth would peo­ple move into a flat whose ter­race looks out onto the yard of a girls’ school, and then com­plain about the noise? Very irritating.

Becky arrived and after we bought every­thing in sight and took a look at the deplet­ed cake sale table, we went out­side to wait for the girls to come out. Sud­den­ly, up the pave­ment came a lady, although I use the word with some cau­tion, dressed in an out­landish span­gled, off the shoul­der, plung­ing neck­line dress, in ultra high heels with her hair teased a mile off the top of her head. She ran toward the school as fast as her hideous shoes would allow, and then stopped dead in front of the entrance, turn­ing toward the street. “Miles, Miles, park there, park there,” she screeched to a dri­ver stand­ing on the pave­ment. Behind him were two enor­mous white lim­ou­sines, dec­o­rat­ed with pink rib­bon bows on their grilles, dou­ble-parked by the kerb (note Eng­lish spelling, please). Becky and I tried not to look at her. “If I ever, ever, even APPROACH look­ing any­thing like that, please stop me,” she said. We were both smoth­er­ing laugh­ing, and won­der­ing who on earth this could be. “Please let her clothes be in the line of duty,” Becky hissed. We decid­ed she was a birth­day par­ty enter­tain­er. And sure enough, the lit­tle Form Three girls came fil­ing out of the build­ing, dressed, as they do for after school par­ties, in fes­tive non-uni­form clothes, look­ing odd­ly ran­dom, clutch­ing their back­packs. They were packed up into the lim­ou­sines chat­ter­ing mad­ly. I said to Becky, “No one at home would believe this if I told them.” Very un-PS 234!