One of the greatest joys of cake making is the ritual of ‘Cleaning Out The Bowl With Your Finger’ once the main body of the cake mixture has been deposited in its baking receptacle. Isn’t it? Yes?
(I just need to define ‘mixture’ here - mixture = butter, sugar, eggs and flour plus flavouring, for example lemon, orange, marmalade, nuts, chocolate, cocoa, dried fruit, not dried fruit, smushy vegetables etc etc blah, blah, blah according to your end cake requirements. Mixture does NOT mean one of those supermarket packet cake mixes to which one apparently adds milk and/or eggs, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never used them. NEVER. This kind of cake mixture is heresy, and if it is the kind of mixture you use, then I would politely ask you to stand in the corner over there, and not return until you have repented your heinous cake making ways.)
Oh yes, one of my earliest memories at the elbows of my cake making relatives was the opportunity to ‘lick out the bowl’ at the end of the mixing session, which was greeted with enormous glee and bid goodbye with a very sticky finger. And never once have I been poisoned by ingesting raw egg.
However, according to my much respected, aged and beloved Auntie Pollie, one should use a spatula with which to clean the bowl post cake-mixing and NOT one’s finger. And this I discovered only recently when, during a FaceTime, I was telling her that during a kitchen drawer clean out, I discovered 5 spatulas, none of which I had purchased, so I hadn’t a clue how they ended up in my drawers.
‘Never purchased a spatula?’ said Auntie Pollie. ‘How do you clean out your mixing bowl?’
I waggled the forefinger of my right hand at her. She pulled a face, and I reckon if she’d have been within arm’s length, she’d have smacked me. Fortunately, she was 240 miles away.
‘You should use a spatula,’ said she, making me feel like I had no choice in the matter. ‘And you’ve got 5 from which to choose!’
As it happened, I had whittled my inadvertent spatula collection down to 2, and one of those has subsequently gone to live with my daughter. We are a single spatula family now. This morning, I made a marmalade cake, and decided to employ the lone spatula, which I remembered being a birthday gift from a friend.
...and thanks to Auntie Pollie’s sage advice, once I had deposited the cake mix into the tin, and cleaned out the bowl with my finger, I found I could glean MORE scrummy raw cake mixture from the bowl by using the spatula!
So I licked that, too!
‘Fess up, then. Who else licks their cake bowl?
Comments
My niece who is an absolutely brilliant baker once made a packet mix cake because she was in a hurry, She said she has never had so many compliments on the quality of her sponge cake.