Meet Me at the Cupcake Café (63 page)

‘Darling girl,’ Austin said, somewhat absent-mindedly, holding her close and kissing her hair.

‘Where were you? I need you to see something.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve had some news.’

He held up the carrier, which he’d clearly wrapped in the dark. ‘Shall we hand over the gift first?’

‘No!’ said Issy, forgetting about her own present. ‘News is news!’

The timer Austin had fixed to the fairy lights came on. Chester got up to close the shop curtains and waved at them. They waved back. The stumpy little tree glowed and became beautiful.

‘It’s the office,’ said Austin. ‘They’ve … well, apparently I’ve done quite well recently in one thing or another …’

It was true. Sometimes it was as if his handling of Graeme and the snatching of the girl of his dreams had acted like a wake-up call to Austin; a reminder to stop sleepwalking through his days; to get on and achieve something before it was too late. That, plus some subtle and not-so-subtle rearranging of his affairs by Issy, who preferred things neat and cosy at home, and had moved in in all but name, had given him a spring in his step and a sudden huge appetite for new deals and new opportunities.

‘Anyway … here’s the thing. They wanted to know if I’d like to go, um, abroad. Away.’

‘Away?’ said Issy, a cold fear clutching her guts. ‘Where?’

Austin shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They just said “overseas posting”. Somewhere near a good school for Darny.’

‘And an A&E,’ said Issy. ‘Oh gosh. Gosh!’

‘You know,’ said Austin, ‘I haven’t travelled that much.’ He looked at her expectantly.

Issy’s pretty face was grave, her brow a little furrowed.

‘Well, I suppose …’ said Issy, finally, ‘it could be time to expand the empire … internationally.’

Austin’s heart leapt.

‘You think?’ he said, delightedly. ‘Cor!’

‘Somewhere,’ reflected Issy, ‘where the bank managers are very receptive to bribes.’

They smiled at one another. Issy’s eyes were shining.

‘God, though, Austin. I mean, it is huge. Scary, and huge.’

‘Would it help,’ said Austin, ‘if I told you that I love you?’

‘Would you kiss me under the fairy lights while you say it?’ whispered Issy. ‘Then I think I’d follow you anywhere. Please let it not be Yemen.’

‘I do love Stokey,’ reflected Austin, later. ‘Though you know what? Maybe home is just wherever you and Darny are.’

And he kissed her hard, beneath the glowing branches of the little, stunted pear tree, already dreaming of spring.

Baking your first cupcake
by The Caked Crusader

So, you’ve read this fab novel and, apart from thinking, gosh, I want to read all of Jenny Colgan’s other novels, you’re also thinking, I want to bake my own cupcakes. Congratulations! You are setting out on a journey that will result in pleasure and great cake!

Firstly, I’ll let you into a little secret that no cupcake bakery would want me to share: making cupcakes is easy, quick and cheap. You will create cupcakes in your own home – even on your first attempt, I promise – that taste better and look better than commercially produced cakes.

The great thing about making cupcakes is how little equipment they require. Chances are you already have a cupcake tin (the tray with twelve cavities) knocking about in your kitchen cupboards. It’s the same pan you use for making Yorkshire puds and, even if you don’t have one, they can be picked up for under £5 in your supermarket’s kitchenware aisle. The only other thing to buy before you can get started is a pack of paper cases, which, again, any supermarket sells in the home baking aisle.

Before we delve into the workings of a vanilla cupcake recipe, it’s important to absorb what I think of as the four key principles of baking (this makes them sound rather grander than they are!):

–   Bring the ingredients (particularly the butter) to room temperature before you start. Not only will this create the best cupcake but also it’s so much easier for you to work with the ingredients … and why wouldn’t you want to make it easy on yourself?

–   Preheat your oven i.e. switch it on to the right temperature setting about 20–30 minutes before the cakes go into the oven. This means that the cake batter receives the correct temperature straight away and all the chemical processes will commence, thus producing a light sponge. Thankfully, in order to bake a great cupcake, you don’t need to know what all those chemical processes are!

–   Weigh your ingredients on a scale and make sure you don’t miss anything out. Baking isn’t like any other form of cooking – you can’t guess the measurements or make substitutions and expect success. If you’re making a casserole that requires two carrots and you decide to put in three, chances are it will be just as lovely (although perhaps a touch more carroty); if your cake recipe requires, for example, two eggs and you put in three, what would have been an airy fluffy sponge will come out like eggy dough. This may sound restrictive but actually, it’s great – all the thinking is done for you in the recipe, yet you’ll get all the credit for baking a delicious cupcake.

–   Use good-quality ingredients. If you put butter on your bread, why would you put margarine in a cake? If you eat nice chocolate, why would you use cooking chocolate in a cake? A cake can only be as nice as the ingredients going into it.

Here is my failsafe recipe for vanilla sponge cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. It will make 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

125g unsalted butter, at room temperature

125g caster sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

125g self-raising flour, sifted i.e. passed through a sieve

2 tsp vanilla extract (N.B. ‘extract’, not ‘essence’. Extract is natural whereas essence contains chemicals and is nasty)

2 tbsp milk (you can use whole milk or semi-skimmed but not skimmed, as it tastes horrible)

For the buttercream:

125g unsalted butter, at room temperature

250g icing sugar, sifted i.e. passed through a sieve

1 tsp vanilla extract

Splash of milk – by which I mean, start with a tablespoon, beat that in, see if the buttercream is the texture you want, if it isn’t add a further tablespoon etc

How to make:

Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/gas mark 5.

Line a cupcake pan with paper cases. This recipe will make 12 cupcakes.

Beat the butter and sugar together until they are smooth, fluffy and pale. This will take several minutes even with soft butter. Don’t skimp on this stage, as this is where you get air into the mix. How you choose to beat the ingredients is up to you. When I started baking I used a wooden spoon, then I got handheld electric beaters and now I use a stand mixer. They will all yield the same result, however, if you use the wooden spoon, you will get a rather splendid upper arm workout … who said cake was unhealthy?

Add the eggs, flour, vanilla and milk and beat until smooth. Some recipes require you to add all these ingredients separately but, for this recipe, you don’t have to worry about that. You are looking for what’s called ‘dropping consistency’; this means that when you take a spoonful of mixture and gently tap the spoon, the mixture will drop off. If the mixture doesn’t drop off the spoon, mix it some more. If it still won’t drop, add a further tablespoon of milk.

Spoon into the paper cases. There is no need to level the batter, as the heat of the oven will do this for you. Place the tray in the upper half of the oven. Do not open the oven door until the cakes have baked for twelve minutes, then check them by inserting a skewer (if you don’t have one, use a wooden cocktail stick) into the centre of the sponges – if it comes out clean, the cakes are ready and you can remove them from the oven. If raw batter comes out on the skewer, pop them back in the oven and give them a couple more minutes. Cupcakes, being small, can switch from underdone to overdone quickly so don’t get distracted! Don’t worry if your cakes take longer than a recipe states – ovens vary.

As soon as the cupcakes come out of the oven, tip them out of the tin on to a wire rack. If you leave them in the tin they will carry on cooking (the tin is very hot) and the paper case may start to pull away from the sponge, which looks ugly. Once on the wire rack they will cool quickly – about thirty minutes.

Now make the buttercream: beat the butter in a bowl, on its own, until very soft. It will start to look almost like whipped cream. It is this stage in the process that makes your buttercream light and delicious.

Add the icing sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Go gently at first otherwise the icing sugar will cloud up and coat you and your kitchen with white dust! Keep mixing until the butter and sugar are combined and smooth; the best test for this is to place a small amount of the icing on your tongue and press it up against the roof of your mouth. If it feels gritty, it needs more beating. If it’s smooth, you can move on to the next step.

Beat in the vanilla and milk. If the buttercream isn’t as soft as you would like, then add a tiny bit more milk but be careful – you don’t want to make the buttercream sloppy.

Either spread or pipe over the cupcakes. Spreading is easier and requires no additional equipment. However, if you want your cupcakes to look fancy it might be worth buying an icing bag and star-shaped nozzle. You can get disposable icing bags, which cut down on washing-up.

Add any additional decoration you desire – this is where you can be creative. In the past I have used sugar flowers, hundreds and thousands, maltesers, edible glitter, sprinkles, nuts, crumbled Flake … the options are endless.

Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.

Eat.

Me and the 1981
Royal Wedding

I was nine years old in 1981, for what I like to call the
real
royal wedding – the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. It really was an optimal time for frothy-dress-based princessy excitement (that was then, of course. I realise that these days, according to the tabloids, all nine-year-olds have tattoos and drink Bacardi Breezers and things, but those were more innocent times).

Me, Alison Woodall and Judi Taylor thought that it was all absolutely fantastic, and managed to refine our dress-designing skills to the point where I could still draw that dress now – ruffly sleeves; bow in the middle; too-short flicky hair – with my eyes shut.

I watched the entire thing (TV in the morning was a novelty then), even that incredibly long boring bit where they all went in for the wedding breakfast, which seemed utterly tedious to me. It turned out I was right about this: unless you’re sat next to people you like, wedding dinners can be incredibly dull. Can you imagine what it must have been like if you’d been sat next to e.g. the Dowager Duchess of Chessingham?

Despite growing up in a nominally republican part of the world (the Catholic West Coast of Scotland), we still had a street party, and I have a clear memory of saying to my mother, ‘God would have lost a lot of believers if it hadn’t been a sunny day today, wouldn’t he?’ (it was), to which my mother replied, ‘hmmm,’ (I was a terribly priggish child).

In fact, a friend of mine who married very young in her last year of college, actually managed to be part of that generation, familiar from all eighties snapshots; she was among the last to get married in a Diana-style dress, including the enormous puffed sleeves with the lace and the bows. Apart from the fact that she, like Diana, looks like a tiny child buried in a pile of lacy laundry, it is slightly gorgeous.

When we were passing through Las Vegas about four years ago, my husband and I decided to renew our vows with Elvis (as you do). He and my eldest son wore matching white tuxedos. I dealt with my pent-up royal wedding issues by wearing the hugest, widest, most enormous, flower-festooned frock I could hire. It went on for miles. It got caught in lifts. It was
great
. In fact, I think I secretly preferred it to my very stylish, expensive, subtle, Grace Kelly-esque wedding dress I got married in the first time around. It was brilliant.

For all the sadness and tragedy that followed – and it is almost impossible to now look at the famous pic of the laughing Diana, collapsing in that huge meringue surrounded by her little bridesmaids, without feeling melancholic – it was a huge jolly occasion, and it is only the most churlish, I think, who wouldn’t wish all the very best now to her son, and someone who seems like a perfectly nice girl.

If nothing else, it’s lovely to have a little day of national celebration and an excuse for a street party. And some cake, of course! My daughter is only one, so not quite old enough to get caught up in wedding dress fever alas, and chances are Kate will go for something very low-key and stylish anyway (she does seem like that kind of person), which, I think, is a bit of a shame for budding nine-year-old wedding dress designers everywhere. But hopefully having a slightly more mature princess, who knows what she wants, will bode very well for their years ahead.