Cakes

BH baked a Dundee cakes (less the almonds on top which I don't approve of) and some flapjacks (quite crispy, with treacle rather than syrup) against our holiday on Dartmoor. Unfortunately we forgot to take the cake and only took enough flapjacks for the journey. Not a problem in the sense that both improve with a modest amount of storage, but it did leave us cake light.

As an interim measure we bought some Cherry Madeira cake from the excellent community store at Holne, a variety of cake I used to like as a child. And as it turned out we had two of them, as another came with our cottage. Damp, sweet and edible, but only distantly related to the sort of Madeira cake (preferably with caraway seeds) that one might make at home.

The long list of ingredients, topped by sugar, is snapped above. The lengths one has to go to to make a product which will sit on shelves for a long time! The curious might like to know that E415 is xanthan gum, a natural carbohydrate produced by fermenting glucose with the appropriate micro organisms (Xanthomonas campestris). It is gluten-free but can be used as a substitute for gluten (the protein which gives wheat flour its structure). I believe I have come across the stuff before. While Bakehouse & Delights feature at reference 4.

We tried two other sorts of flapjack, both of the soft but chewy variety, rather than the crispy ones preferred by BH. The ones from the community store featured nuts, which I did not approve of. While the ones from the baker at Horrabridge (along the road from the Yelverton of the white puddings already noticed at reference 1) featured coconut, which, while better than nuts, is not approved of either.

On the other hand, he did sell us some respectable white bread, some fine rock cakes and a couple of large, floppy buns, country versions of Chelsea buns. Very good they were too.

Our last call of this sort was to the orgo shop of reference 3, next to Buckfast Abbey. A place with car parking and convenient to Buckfast Abbey, which we visit quite a lot when we are down. They have been badly infested with the sour dough disease, but I did manage to extract some regular white bread, suitable for cheese & onion and cheese & tomato sandwiches, which do not work for me on my regular brown.  We also took some crumpets which did well, rather better than the own brand version from Sainsbury's of Kiln Lane here at Epsom.

PS: the three large volumes of reference 5 having turned up yesterday from eBay, I thought to look flapjack up there. I learn of four meanings: griddle cake, fruit turnover, a variety of turtle and a large, flat, circular compact for face powder. Fat lot they know about flapjacks. A more systematic comparison with our own OED will follow in due course.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/heritage-junk-food-record.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/honeys-bakery.html. First notice of the baker at Horrabridge. Which reminds me that the baker at Ashburton, Ella the artisan, from whom we have had some excellent white bread in the past, looked rather shut up on the various occasions we passed it last week. An operation of modest dimensions which may have succumbed. Not clear from Bing how she is doing.

Reference 3: https://www.tuckersmarket.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/being-nosey.html.

Reference 5: Webster's Third New International Dictionary – Philip P. Gove and others – 1971.