If in doubt, bake.

I started writing a few years ago. Whenever people say they’ve started writing they usually tack on “seriously,” but in my case it wasn’t serious. It was, however, prolix. To be precise, 83,252 words over the course of three months. Wordy- like this opener.

The reason all those words tumbled out was because, like many people, I was writing as a distraction. I made up a morning mantra, “if in doubt, write.” There was a lot of doubt, so there was a lot of writing. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, then stopped, tortured my step-sister by making her read the whole thing (including two embarrassingly badly written, and just generally embarrassing, sex scenes), and put it in a drawer.

Today I had the sort of day my father would describe as “marginal,” aka, unideal. The sort of day you can have in the life of a barrister which makes you wonder how mighty the pen really is. A sense of injustice is not a comfortable thing to sit with, it sprawls, gets its elbows out, takes up all the space on the bench and eats the last of the roast potatoes.

And then I remembered the mantra, “if in doubt, write,” and developed it into, “if in doubt, bake,” or to combine the two in a sweet synthesis, “if in doubt, write about baking.”

This has prompted me to return to my long-neglected blog. I’d like to say it was set aside because I’ve been busy with novel no. 2, but I was stuck there too. The mantra had failed me. Perhaps the problem wasn’t doubt, but certainty. I was sure I couldn’t move the story on. So I’d abandoned one of my characters sitting at dawn on a wall in New York after cheating on her girlfriend (not on the dawn wall at least), another driving back from Heathrow, and the third of my trio of women standing half-way up the stairs of the Wiener Library.

To celebrate my return to the blog I’m writing about my happy experiences baking Claudia Roden’s famous Orange Cake. For anyone who has Claudia’s book, you’ll know that she is not given to self-congratulation but even if she were this cake entirely deserves the line she includes, “it has been widely adopted (it is on the menu of several restaurants in Australia).”

It is the cake that launched a thousand pounds on my hips.

The very process of making it will bring joy. Firstly because you wash and boil 2 whole oranges (including their skins) for 1.5 hours or until they’re soft. I know, I know, you can put them in a bowl in the microwave with cling film on but that would take away the sensation of being in an orange grove on a particularly steamy day. You can just re-locate your working from home to the kitchen to keep a bit of an eye on them. I promised more Northernerisms- doing a bit of something rather than the whole shebang is a classic. I grew up in a house in which when it got cold you were told to “put a bit of a coat on.” Always begging the question from us little cheeksters, “what, like, a sleeve?”

The reason you keep the skins on (Rob was suspicious at first) is because it gives the whole thing a wonderful zesty kick. When they’re soft (knife point test) you cut them open, remove the pips, and purée the oranges in the food processor. The cakey bit of the cake is made with almond flour, sugar, baking powder and eggs, along with 2 tablespoons of orange blossom water. Mix the whole thing together and put it in a 23cm cake tin in an oven at 190 C for an hour. Here is the recipe.

Now, this is a cake that starts out extremely easy but in the home stretch requires a bit of care. By which I mean that my friend Rob, Director of Photography par excellence and general cake rescuer (here he is with David Attenborough), had to go and check on it six times because it did seem to stay quite wet and yet at the same time go dark on the top quickly. I’d advise some tin foil on the top in the latter stages, and patience. It is after all, a virtue.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, when life gives you limes make love, and when it gives you oranges, make this cake, share it, and all will be well.