Last week I was at the most amazing poetry event for children. There's been a poetry festival nearby, and they'd invited a children's poet, Paul Cookson, who entertains, reads from his books, gets the kids joining in, and is simply a five star act. The children, who practically ate out of his hand, were from the local schools and had been invited to present some of their own poetry, too. And if that weren't enough, there was cake, too.
On Saturday morning I did some storytelling and told, among other things, The Lambton Worm. It's a well known story in the North East, where I come from, but most people at the south end of Yorkshire don't know it.
Then, this afternoon, Tony went out to visit a couple from one of our churches, and it just so happened that their little grand-daughter was visiting and was Baking Cakes with Granny. They gave Tony two buns fresh from the oven for tea time, one in a pink case, one in a blue one!
When my lot were small, it was bread, more than cakes, that we used to make together. Bread dough is a great thing to do with children, because it doesn't mind being squidged and it's very flexible. They'd make bread rolls shaped like the initials of whoever was coming to tea, and there was always a bit left over to make lardy cake, which is a kind of poor man's Chelsea Bun. It's light and sweet and utterly gorgeous and so bad for you that if you made it these days it would be impounded by the Health Police. But it's good. And the kids spent far more time running about than they did eating lardy cakes.
A theme is developing. Cake. There is a Scottish story about The Woman Who Baked for the Fairies, but I can't remember it quite well enough to tell it. Does anyone know it? I could do Storytelling and Cake sessions. That would go down a treat.
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2 comments:
Lardy cakes! Do I scent another wonderful English recipe here?
Gingerbread is also fun to do with kids... at least our gingerbread cookie recipe doesn't have eggs, so it's like modeling clay, and you can eat it raw... which crunches because of the brown sugar. Lovely stuff, that.
Gingerbread without eggs? That sounds interesting. Would like to try that. In Yorkshire they make a very sticky gingerbread called parkin, which is associated with Bonfire night.
For lardy cake you just take a piece of the basic bread dough, roll it out, spread it with butter, lard, or margarine, and sprinkle it with sugar and currants. Then you fold it up, roll it out again, and bake it. I think it's similar to cinnamon buns.
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