I am at the Savoy to learn how to bake the cake you see on the cover of OFM. I expected to be impressed by this venerable institution but below-stairs is a complete revelation. Vast and cavernous (Middle Earth meets Spaghetti Junction), its denizens scuttle the corridors blinking and mole-like and I soon discover that the journey from my temporary home, the pastry kitchen, to the (massive) in-house dry cleaners, where I will be fitted with a uniform, requires a guide.
'Who are you?' bark a couple of stray chefs as I pass, compass in hand.
'I'm a pastry chef.' (Well, I've got the kit.)
'HA! No you're not,' and they're gone. Is it that obvious?
Anyway, it's just a little bit bonkers down here amid the millefeuille layers of higgledy-piggledy subterranean floors (no daylight and a sickly-sweet Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aroma certainly contribute), and I am already enormously suspicious of the pastry kitchen - quite unlike any other pro kitchen I've ever seen because it is run by an utterly charming, smiling and apparently easy-going (how can that be?) head pastry chef, Robert Hope, and his equally delightful and smiley team. Admittedly we're in the brief hiatus between post-lunch and pre-dinner, but is the kitchen usually this calm?
'No,' admits Rob, a 35-year-old New Zealander who has been in the job for 18 months, 'but then I'm not really a shouter even when it's complete chaos. Though I might just go into a corner and shout at myself.' And he proceeds to reminisce with his staff about a hellish-sounding recent evening when he discovered (at 6pm) that the dessert for 400 his team had spent all day preparing for a function (and which was due to be served at 8.30) was not, in fact, the dessert the client was expecting (it was, for the record, the difference between bread and butter pudding and bread and butter soufflé, which may not sound like much to you or me but, as far as Rob was concerned, it was the difference between the white cliffs of Dover and a hunk of mature dairy produce).
After a nail-biting delay in which a taxi was dispatched to the kitchens of another very important hotel (on discovering they were several hundred ramekins short), the Savoy's pastry gang finally delivered their 400 souffles bang on time at 8.30pm. I suspect that it is in big kitchens under pressure that you will find the closest thing to the old Blitz spirit. Here, among the smiling cakemakers, all must necessarily be sweetness and light.
Anyway, it turns out that underneath the marzipan and icing sugar of OFM's gorgeous first birthday cake there lies a fine old-fashioned Dundee cake, perfect for dunking. The only way even for Rob to make this cake, however, is to consult the pastry oracle - a venerable, dog-eared and chocolate-smudged collection of recipes that has been handed down through many generations of Savoy pastry chefs. Were a new chef with Big Ideas ever to spontaneously deviate from this set text, s/he might well be frogmarched out through the maze, stripped of his/her whites and tossed straight into the Thames. And if any chef is brave enough to come up with a recipe s/he might deem worthy of inclusion, it must be given the OK by a (secret and doubtless strict) Savoy test panel.
Cake-making can be great fun at the worst of times (though perhaps not when you're feeding the 400), but it has to be said that cake-making alongside a team who measure out all your ingredients for you is pretty much as good as it gets. My big fear - the risk ofÊrepetitive whisk syndrome from creaming together the butter and sugar and slowly introducing the eggs -Êis immediately dispelled by the presence of an enormous (and suitably temperamental) diva of a blender. And then there is a great deal of gloopy, giggly pleasure to be had from adding the necessary sultanas, mixed peel and zest, especially by hand. And once your mixture is mixed, your moulds filled, your decorative almonds arranged and your cakes are, finally, safely in the oven, to be invited to partake of afternoon tea upstairs in the hotel, where the pianist tickles Scott Joplin and the crust-free smoked salmon sandwiches and bouncy-castle scones beckon, is very heaven.
About an hour and 40 minutes later (with cake-making, timing is, sadly, never going to be an exact science), I was back downstairs to see my Dundee beauties emerge from the oven oozing the aroma of a thousand Sunday teatimes. 'Mmm,' said Rob when he took a test bite, 'that's great, we'll be using all of these.' Which, as a compliment, is about all you ever need to hear from the head pastry chef of the Savoy after you've just spent an afternoon baking him nine cakes - despite the fact that, as a result, I was forced to leave empty-handed. Still, I could definitely get used to this kind of baking - if only one could get the staff.
The Savoy Hotel's Dundee Cake
Makes 9-10 cakes
900gms unsalted butter
1360gms demerara brown sugar
18 eggs
1360gms soft flour
30gms baking powder
1820gms sultanas
900gms mixed peel
zest of 1 orange
zest of 2 lemons
Cream together the unsalted butter and demerara sugar until light and fluffy. Slowly add the eggs; be careful not to split the mix (if the mixture begins to split, add a little flour). Sieve together the flour and baking powder. Take a quarter of the flour and mix with the dried fruits, coating all of the fruits. Mix the flour and the baking powder into the mixture. Mix the dried fruits and zest into the mixture.
Grease and line the terrines. Fill the moulds or terrines just over half full with the mixture. Note: 650-700gms fills one terrine.
Bake at 175¡C for approximately one hour and 15 minutes (in fact this turned out to be closer to 1 hour, 45 minutes).
When baked, allow to stand for 10 mins. Remove from moulds and cool on a wire rack.
Flett's P.S:
(This bit isn't in the Savoy's Oracle)
Eat...In the garden with a nice cup of tea, preferably in dappled sunshine under a spreading oak. Follow with 40 winks.
