24 August 2010
Recipe For Business Success Cake
I am a fan of those little self-published recipe books as within them you often get real recipe gems that have been handed down from generation to generation within families. You also get a lot of rubbish, as well, but a recipe book with even only one good recipe is a decent book.
Within a small Cook Book prepared for the St Clare Hospice in West Essex, they not only have some interesting recipes, but two of those quaint, sentimental recipes for life - one for marriage and another for motherhood. To these, I have created my own, slightly jejeune version - a Recipe For Business Success.
Recipe For Business Cake
For the base:
6oz Good idea
3oz Some starting capital
1tsp Good luck
For the filling:
11oz Hard work and grind
3oz Busy sales & marketing
5oz Plain cost control
4oz Credit control
1tsp Some good fortune
1tsp Understanding bank manager
Juice of common sense
For the sauce:
12oz Youthful enthusiasm
1oz Good humour
Crush the Good Idea, melt the Capital, add Good Luck and stir togther. Press over the base of a loose bottomed cake tin.
Mix together all the ingredients for the filling in a large mixing bowl and blend thoroughly together until light and creamy. Pour over base in the cake tin. Place in oven and cook on a high heat for 2 - 3 years, then reduce heat and bake at medium heat for another 7 years, then test for taste and to see how well it has come together. Cook for longer if required.
Prepare the sauce by melting together the Youthful Enthusiasm and Good Humour in a small sauce pan.
Take the Business Cake out of the oven and serve immediately with the sauce poured over it.
If it does not work the first time, try it again but alter the recipe based on previous experiences.
The classic recipes
Here are the classic recipes that you sometimes find printed in these sort of booklets:
A Good Wedding Cake
4lb love
½lb good looks
1lb blindness of faults
1lb pounded wit
2tbsp sweet argument
1 wine glass of common sense
1lb butter of youth
1lb sweet temper
1lb self forgetfulness
1lb good humour
1 pint rippling laughter
1oz modesty
Put the love, good looks and sweet temper into a well furnished house. Beat the butter of youth to a cream and mix well together with the blindness of faults. Stir the pounded wit and good humour into the sweet argument, then add the rippling laughter and common sense. Work the whole together until everything is well mixed, and bake gently for ever.
[This was found in a church booklet of recipes printed in the early 1900s]
Recipe for Motherhood
Mix an abundance of patience laced with an ample amount of understanding. Add daily two armfuls of tenderness. Season with a sense of humour. Blend the above with enough love to last from yesterday until tomorrow.
[Origin unknown - Came in a mothering sunday gift from a playgroup in the 1970s]
