CAKES—AND CAKES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 229, 16 December 1927, Page 13

CAKES—AND CAKES

CHRISTMAS BAKING GAS CO.’S COMPETITION Over 450 Christmas cakes for Auckland families already have been cut, and the honours of Yuletide baking awarded. There will be many very happy small boys when they set their juvenile teeth into their mothers’ full rich mixture. There might also be a few disillusioned young husbands when they venture —perhaps for the first time —a sample of the Christmas cake made in the little home; there certainly are many housewives whose efforts over the gas-stove will give the domestic circle ungarnished delight. The Christmas cake competition, which was instituted and conducted by the Auckland Gas Company, has proved this; and the scene of the large number of fruit cakes moves the observer to one of two emotions — either to turn sick at the hopelessness of human gastronomic frailty or to beg of the authorities just to be left alone for a while to bask in the short-lived sunshine of these culinary delights. The array of over 450 cakes proves that there are cakes and cakes—-even with gas-stoves. Some housewives must be very disappointed to-day—-some might even shed a silent tear — when they view for the first time the interior of the big round cake that merged from the oven looking so fine and well-cooked, but which failed to stand the test when cut. Some indeed will experience a fervent wish that they had tied their mixture in a bag, boiled it and tied it to the ceiling till the time for Christmas dinner arrives.

The great majority of the cakes sent in were quite good, however, and not more than a dozen or so could be ranked in the line of failures. Some, of course, were burnt—Christmas cakes so frequently are—some were not half-cooked, some could not stand the strain of an overdose of baking powder; others in turn were a credit to the efficiency of the makers in using their stoves to the best possible advantage of the elaborate regulation attachments. COOK’S APOLOGY

One was a classic illustration of what a housewife should not do—even to a tolerant and long-suffering husband: The cake—it really was a cake —was turned out from a pie dish, and showed a hollow in the centre as deep as the Waimangu Geyser. Attached to the entry was an apologetia note from the maker; “It is not the fault of the stove that my cake has fallen in,” it read. “I am sorry it fell, but the mixture is all there.” When the attention of the com ; pany’s demonstrator, Mrs. Mann, Was called to this domestic tragedy, THE SUN man was reminded of the Greek motto, quoted only yesterday by a noted cleric: “He who fails bravely does not truly fail, but is himself a conqueror.”

A certain husband will have his own thoughts about this Greek motto, when the cake returns to haunt the inhabitants of its original home.

The general exhibition was praised by Mrs. Mann, however, and the lady demonstrator paid a generous tribute to the spirit of the housewives of Auckland in sending their cakes forward—many of them knowing at the outset that they did not possess the remotest hope of gaining a place in the honours.

Mrs. Mann will have something interesting to tell those who turned their gas taps on too far, those who failed to get the steady heat required, and those who hurried their cakes to the oven without adequate mixing. An inch of black on the bottom of the cake was eloquent indication of what happened to some of the less successful competitors.

The judges, Mrs. Stanley (nee Una Carter), Miss Melville and Mr. Stormont, sen., awarded the prize stove to Mrs. Dunbar, of Monoghan Avenue, Mount Albert, whose cake, baked in a Dominion-made stove, excited favourable comment from those who examined its texture.