Cake expectations

We're having a big party in the New Building on Friday. Staff were asked to sign up on the intranet if they wanted to come, register the potential attendance of their partner and/or children, and say if they would bake a cake to represent one of the countries that we work in. You could choose your country from a drop down list, or state 'No cake'. Stop laughing at the back.

I thought about this for a while. I decided to bake a cake for the UK, as this is the country I work on behalf of, as well as the country I live in, as well as a country with a good cake reputation. But it had already gone. I then thought about baking a cake for Zambia, but it is not a place famed for its cakiness and the flag is mainly green, which is not a great cake colour.

So I plumped for Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Can you think of a Palestinian cake recipe? No. Are they a cake shape? No. Is the use of a flag fraught with issues? Yes. Did I decide this was possibly the stupidest idea I'd ever had? Yes. Was this compounded by the news that the 'cake competition will be judged by the Director'? Yes. Competition? It wasn't a competition when I said I'd do it. Shall I pull a sickie on the day?

But then I found this Nigel Slater recipe for orange and honey polenta cake, and a chord was struck.

It goes a little something like this. When I was little and food still had seasons my Israeli grandmother used to send us a crate of Jaffa oranges over from Haifa every winter. My mum would store them in the garage, still in their crate and shredded paper and exotic perfumed oranginess, and my sister and I would sneak in and feel and smell them and think about when we would get to eat them. I don't really remember eating them, I just remember thinking about eating them.

I first went to Israel when I was 10, and I was overwhelmed by the dry warmth and the orange blossom scent in the air. My dad's cousin took us out in a jeep and I stood up in the back getting blown to bits by the hot wind. We stopped in an orange grove and he twisted a big orange off a tree and gave it to me. I held it like a huge jewel, not quite knowing what to do with it, until he gouged a hole in it with his thumb and told me to squeeze it into my mouth.

It was juicy and sweet and warm from the sun and like nothing I had ever tasted. The Jaffas in the crate in the garage never tasted this good, even though they tasted a hundred times better than any other oranges we ever got.

So I associate oranges with Israel, with sunshine and with youth and wonder. An orange cake is the cake to bake.

joella