This is my 1970s lesson for making cakes with Stork Margarine
Today’s lesson is the All in One Method for cake making, promoted by Marguerite Patten and other famous cooks at those demonstration kitchens at the food shows in Olympia and Earls Court. Some newly arrived Stork leaflets called The Art of Home Cooking are piled on my desk to hand out for them to take home.
A new promotion no doubt shows that Stork is better than butter. Led by those clever food technicians who are busy creating so many new products for our supermarket shelves. Am I part of their marketing plan? Persuading schoolchildren to use Stork? Save time! Use Stork! It’s better than butter.
‘All in one! All in one! It’s time for the All in One!’
They sit baffled on the stools. What is she talking about?
This demonstration is going to be so easy. Drop the old cake making rules. No more beating margarine and sugar to a soft cream that plops off the wooden spoon. No more carefully adding the beaten egg with just a teaspoon of flour if it curdles. No more changing a wooden spoon to a tablespoon. No more stirring flour in a figure of eight. No more old fashioned cake making rules.
We’ll be free. Rewrite the recipe books. No more melting, creaming and rubbing in methods. Throw off our pinnies and dance around the room with all this spare time.
They shuffle on the stools. This time the demonstration is simple. Dump everything – the margarine, sugar, eggs, vanilla essence, self raising flour into a mixing bowl. There’s a secret piece of chemical magic – a teaspoon of baking powder into the flour first. The chemistry as it produces carbon dioxide gas pumps into the mixture and makes the cake rise.
Now we’re off on a journey of cake making – fairy cakes, Victoria sandwich, pineapple upside down cake, treacle sponge. Endless spongy dishes that give joy to the young cooks who can stuff them down as soon as they are cool enough to eat. This is what they really want to cook. Not my nutritious, healthy dishes with strange ingredients like rice and pasta.
I don’t know who said it but they should be famous –
‘Cake is the answer, no matter the question.’
A letter arrives from the exam board. They’ve been thrown into a huff.
THE ALL IN ONE METHOD FOR CAKES AND SAUCES SHOULD NOT BE USED IN THE PRACTICAL EXAM.
What they mean is return to the traditional, slower methods of the Mrs Beeton and the Battersea Recipe books. Old fashioned beating and creaming margarine and sugar for cakes or making a sauce by the roux method. I despair at these out of date examiners who insist on d’oyleying every dish and worry that my students will be penalised when answering old style of exam questions if I teach the easy All in One with these new soft fats.
Like this one
‘Describe four different kinds of fat that can be used in cake making. Which fat would be most suitable for what kind of cake? Describe how the fat is mixed with the other ingredients.’
My students are going to answer Stork, Stork, Stork and Stork and the All in one method and get nil points.
I’m going to apply to become an examiner and change things for the future.
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