31 March 2023 ~ Three Kaliningrad babushkas in a bread shop
On the subject of cakes and pastries, my wife popped into a bakery recently to avail herself of the delicacies there and whilst on the premises was witness to an altogether Russian experience, which reveals and underscores the generation gap.
Ahead of her in the shop were three babushkas who were each having difficulty deciding which loaves of bread to buy: plain white or dark and grainy.
The young man behind the counter, seeking to introduce some levity into the proceedings, cajoled his three stout customers with, “Come on ladies, whichever loaf you choose, I’ll throw in a strip show just for you.”
Three Kaliningrad babushkas in a bread shop
In the UK, no young man behind a bread shop counter, or anywhere else for that matter, would dare to put such temptation, however jocularly meant, in the way of ladies of a certain age for fear of being ravished.
My wife immediately responded to the young man’s offer with “That would be nice!” but the triumvirate was not amused. Far from incentivised, the ladies were clearly horrified. ‘If looks could kill!’ as the expression goes.
Nevertheless, the young man’s words did bring closure to the babushka’s indecisiveness, for grabbing the nearest loaves that they could lay their hands on, money quickly changed hands and with a mutual squaring of shoulders and unified snorting, they left the shop at a gallop.
Said the young shopkeeper to my wife, “Hmmm, that didn’t go down too well, did it!”
It was a pity, because he seemed to be a nice young man with a very fine line in understatement. Let’s hope that until he lands that job as a stripper, he will use his loaf more carefully!
Do you know? Do you know that the Russian word for ‘bread’ is ‘khleb’? Of course you do. Ok, so do you know that the favourite type of bread in Russia is said to be rye rather than wheat? You know that, too. What you don’t know, however, is that Yeast karavai, a round loaf beautifully decorated with ears of corn and foliate motifs, features in the wedding ceremony. Before the reception commences, the newly weds take turns to bite into the loaf. The size of each bite is then compared, and the one who has been judged as having taken the largest bite is duly pronounced the dominant partner from then on in the marriage. How’s that for deciding equality! Neat, nice, no questions asked. When the time came to enact this ritual at our wedding, the bite I took was so prodigious that had my glass of champagne not been placed fortuitously close at hand I could have choked in the process. Hence the expression in matters of matrimony, more perhaps than in anything else, be careful not to ‘bite off more than you can chew’.
A socio-cultural perspective on Russia’s cake habit contrasted and compared with and illuminated by one or two supplementary notes about having your cake and eating it in Great Britain
26 March 2023 ~ Russia’s Love of Cakes Differs from the UK’s
Cakes. I don’t imagine for one moment that when somebody in the West mentions Russia, cakes are the first thing that spring to mind. Equally, I’m willing to wager that the UK media has written precious little lately, or written little at all, about the magnificent variety of cakes in Russia and the widespread availability of them in spite of those silly old sanctions.
They certainly would never divulge that the super-abundance of cakes in Russia is part of a western plot organised and funded by the Sorryarse Open Cake Society to swamp the Federation with cakes similar to the way in which it is suffocating the western world with boat loads of useless migrants. I am not so sure about cake, but the spotted dick that they are creating is filling up with currants.
Whoa now! Hang on a minute! Blin, yolkee polkee and blaha mooha! How dare you lump our delicious Russian cakes in the same inflatable dinghy with a gaggle of grinning third-world freeloaders destined for 5-star hotels at the expense of the British taxpayer!
Sorry, I stand corrected and in the same breath exposed. It is true that I am no Don Juan in the sense of loving cakes. However, as one of the last of the few true Englishmen, I concede to enjoying a nice slice of cake whenever the mood so takes me and when the opportunity avails itself, regarding it as the perfect accompaniment to the English custom of afternoon tea.
All well and good, but neither affrontery apologised for nor my confessed willingness to embrace the iced cake rather than the swarthy migrant amounts to diddly-squat when it comes to explaining the cultural differences that set cake worship apart in Russia from the same proclivities in the UK.
Cakes are cancel proof
Cancel-proof, like most things pertaining to Russian culture, as the West is finding out and finding out the hard way, Russia’s love of cakes is in a sacrosanct league of its own. For example, it is not often, if indeed at all, that you will see men in the UK roaming around the streets with a big sticky cake in their hands. There is every possibility that you will see them holding another man’s hand, or, if you are really unlucky ~ or lucky if you are a touring photographer assigned to defining British culture ~ some other part of their brethren’s anatomy, but never a cake in hand. In the UK there seems to be an hypocritical subtext at work, an unspoken reservation which, ironically, can be taken to imply that even in these enlightened times cakes and men in public together is tantamount to poofterism. Alack a day, but there you have it.
Russia’s love of cakes differs from the UK’s
Having established that men publicly carrying cakes is just not British (but then what is and, more to the point, who is?), we arrive at a striking contrast. I’ve lost count of the number of times when entertaining at home (dispel all images of magic tricks, juggling and karaoke), that on opening the gate to greet our Russian guests, at least one man will be standing there with a large stodgy cake in his grasp. As for dining out, I have yet to go to a restaurant with my Russian friends where rounding off a meal without a sumptuous sweet, most of which resemble cakes drenched in cream and syrup, would turn an everyday event into something of a precedent. Perchance it ever occurs it would breach the unexpected like a hypersonic missile bursting through a dam. Cakes just don’t come in on a wing and a prayer in Russia; they are part of the national psyche, in which whim and caprice can play no part.
Cakes R Rus is a company yet to be incorporated. Why it has not been incorporated when cakes in Russia are so evidently popular remains an enigma and neither does it explain, incorporated or not, the never-to-be-answered question why in Russia are cakes so popular? It is a matter for conjecture that often what presents itself to us as at best half-baked turns out in the long run to be quite overdone. Not so with cakes. Cakes are interwoven into every Fair Isled fabric of daily, popular and expressive life. Judge this on the merit that there are almost as many sayings, comments and literary allusions to cakes as there are cakes themselves. We will come to that shortly.
Speaking from experience, all shops in Kaliningrad, that is to say all food shops ~ except the butchers, the fishmongers, the caviar emporium ~ well, you know what I mean, however small are guaranteed to stock one or two and even sometimes three fairly large round cakes, whilst supermarkets offer flotilla to armada capacity of rich, lavish, opulent and seductively sumptuous cake varieties, sufficient in type, taste, size and price to float everyone’s cake-craving boat.
For the love of cakes
In addition to these general outlets, Kaliningrad is no stranger to the specialist boaterie, sorry I meant to say bakery. There are any number of small independent bakeries (I won’t tell you how many as that would be telling.), but the most noticeable because prolific chain is undoubtedly Königsbäcker. Why not Kalininbacker? What a silly question.
Königsbäcker sells pastries, bakes and cakes, and many of its cakeries ~ sorry I meant to say bakeries ~ also have not-for-sale super-large black and white prints on their walls blown up from original photos of Königsberg as it used to be before the British and Soviets blew it up ~ cake shops and everything else. These images are so poignant that they are enough to make you want to buy double the amount of cakes that you would have bought had you not seen these pictures, just to get the placebo effect.
Now we have both stopped crying, I will try to explain how the perception of cakes in Russia differs to the perceived role that cakes play in modern British society and why; and in the course of doing so you may suspect that you have stumbled on a hint that enables you to answer the question, why in Russia are cakes so popular?
Exactly how the Russian cake mentality diverges from the English equivalent is not as subtle as you might first think. So, for all you cake afficionados out there, let me explain. Here goes!
First and foremost, bugger off The Great British Bakeoff, which was opium for the masses. Like coronavirus, which also kept people at home glued to the television, The Great British B!*off is simply the forerunner of something more dreadful to come, such as The Great British Bakeoff in the Nude and its sequel I’m A Cake Get me Out of Here now previewing on the Ashamed Channel.
The Great British Bakeoff lost all credibility for me when one of the female contestants was allegedly discovered substituting self-raising flour with Viagra. When the cake flopped, she was most disappointed; aren’t we all when cakes don’t rise. But her story had a happy ending, three to be precise, for when the show was over, after tea and cake with three of her male competitors, she left the studio a satisfied woman. So satisfied, in fact, that she continues to pay her BBC licence fee, even to this day!
Anyway, Great Bakeoffs or preferably no Great Bakeoffs, in my experience, the celebritising of cakes has very little impact on consumer purchasing habits. UKers may gasp in unison when confronted on the goggle box by Big Cake El Supremo, but it’s a different story altogether when you see them buying down Asda or Iceland. Small synthetic packet cakes are the type that Brits are likely to plump for, something cheap and abundant, over-stuffed with sugar and convenient enough to fit in one’s pocket. (Hey you, watch out! There’s a store detective about!).
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker’s man bake me a cake as fast as you can (The cherished belief that all bakers are highly motivated individuals lends itself to scrutiny)
It occurs to me (which is the get out clause to ‘it occurs to nobody else and why would it?’), that cakes in Russia are rather more special-occasion items than tear open a packet of Kipling’s as quickly as you like and let that be an end to it!
Kipling’s individual apple pies are not at all bad, although when the sell by date is infringed by disreputable store owners, and this happens more often than it should in the UK, especially in shops run by immigrants, the pastry tends to go dry and then falls in embarrassing flaky bits down the front of your jumper. In winter, when it may or may not be snowing, such things may pass unnoticed but once the Christmas jumper has been discarded and the dark nights have been replaced by the bright relentless spotlight of spring, the shards of pastry in which you are covered can begin to look like dandruff. Mr Kipling may very well make exceedingly crumbly cakes, but to stop yourself from being conned and from looking like a bit of a prick in a jumper covered in pastry, choose your cake stores with care and always check the sell-by-date if you have no other option ~ and options are getting fewer ~ than to buy from P. Akis Convenience Shores, many of which are concentrated in and around the Port of Dover.
Inspired by my last comment, I am tempted to ask, do you remember the 1970s’ individual fruit pie phenomenon, first square with a piece of grease-proof paper wrapped around them and then circular in their own tin-foil base? Tasty! But, alas, like most things in life, they tended to shrink as time went by. Any road, can apple pies truly be classed as cakes? I suppose they can if you drop the word ‘pie’ and substitute it for ‘cake’, and am I stalling because I have bitten off more than I can chew in my self-appointed role as Anglo-Russian cakeologist?
Russia’s love of cakes is holistic
As I said (I hope you’ve been paying attention!), cakes in Russia are rather more special occasion cakes than tear open a packet of Kipling’s as quickly as you like and let that be an end to it. Kipling’s individual apple … (ah, we’ve done that).
Moving on: I am not suggesting that they, Russian cakes, are strictly reserved for births, weddings and funerals, but they do come bearing people, noticeably to home get-togethers, private parties, social gatherings and such like. They also occupy pride of place among boxes of chocolates and flowers as a way of saying thank you to someone who has rendered a kindness to another mortal soul or who has performed some official function above and beyond the call of duty.
In these contexts, presentation shares equal importance with noshability, which possibly explains why the appearance of Russian cakes, with their white-iced coverings, frothy cream crowns and candy sequined and fruit-festooned adornments, make our traditional English jam and cream sponges look like poor relations; same bourgeoise boat perhaps but not at all on the upper-deck level as their ostentatious Russian counterparts. Sigh, how ironically times can change and with them cakes as well!
But let’s not leave it here! Whilst we, the English cannot compete with glitz, there is still something to be said for our good old-fashioned sponge cake, something that wants to make you sing not ‘There will always be an England’, because it’s much too late for that, but ‘There will always be a sponge cake’. There is something solid, enduring, traditional and no-nonsense about plain, old English sponge cakes; something wonderfully neo-imperial, boldly neo-colonial, something so 1940s’ stiff-upper lip that frankly I am astonished that these thoroughly English cakes have not been singled out by ‘take a knee’ cancel-culturists and cast like so many heritage statuesover walls and into ponds with the blessing of the judiciary. Is it too soon to feel mildly complacent?
A socio-cultural perspective on cakes
The socio-cultural and historic significance of cakes may strike you as more than a mouthful, but history is replete with examples where the icing on the cake is the role of the cake itself. Spectacles such as birds flying out of giant cakes has been going on since the time of ancient Rome (not now, of course, because of animal rights laws) and scantily clad frosted women have been leaping out of artificial cakes since the 19th century (not so much these days because of the feminist movement). I am perfectly aware of the existence of the Cambridge Stool Chart, but tell me is there a Cambridge Movement Chart as well?
And you thought they were just coming in by dinghies!!
Literary cake tropes have fared much better than their visual counterparts. Boris Johnson (who had a cake named after him in Kyiv no less ~ where else?), borrowed and modified the well-known phrase ‘Have our cake and eat it’ in his bid to convince democracy of the benefits of Brexit. What he forgot to tell us was that behind the scenes the British and French governments had arranged for a migrant shuttle service ~ full coming, empty returning ~ thus ensuring that after Brexit the cake would be ‘had’ alright, had and eaten by others, nibbled away like vermin at cheese, leaving only the crumbs for the British.
Slightly more famous than Boris Johnson but not, as far as I am aware, cake enriched by name is Mary Antionette. She is credited with saying ‘Let them eat cake!’, and although she probably said nothing of the sort, her disregard or misperception of the plight of her country’s poor is nowhere near as offensive as the Conservative party’s debasing betrayal of Britain’s Brexit electorate.
Boris ‘Cake’ Johnson, sometimes referred to as ‘that Big Cream Puff’, is not alone among the star-spangled luminaries of showbusiness who have had honorary cakes named after them. Cake-named celebrities include Elvis Presley and also a number of Russian personalities such as the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova and the first human space traveller Yuri Gagarin, both of whom the West tried to cancel just because their cakes were better than the one that was baked for Boris in Kyiv according to Biden’s recipe (that’s Biden as in empty chef’s hat not as in Master Baker). My question is, isn’t it about time that someone in Russia named a cake after my favourite crooner Kobzon?
Whist I wait for this honour to be bestowed, we will hold our collective breath in anticipation of Jimmy Saville, Gary Glitter and also Adolf Hitler, oh and don’t forget our Tony ~ Tony ‘Iraq’ Blair ~ duly having cakes named after their very illustrious personages.
And what is so wrong about that? A good many famous people and not so famous places have had cakes named after them. The most obvious in the person category being Mrs Sponge, who lent her name to the sponge cake. It’s fact! Her first name was Victoria. She lived at 65 Coronation Crescent, Corby. (Source: Alfred ‘Dicky’ Bird)
Another famous namesake cake is the Battenberg, named after Prince Cake, and in the towns and locale category, that is to say places that have given their names to cakes, we have the English Eccles cake, named after Scunthorpe, obviously, and the Sad cake named after Wellingborough. It’s a ‘going there thing’: so don’t!
The metropolis has its own cake, historically known as the White Iced Empire but renamed in more recent years, if not entirely rewritten, as Black Forest Ghetto. Chocolate Woke, as it is colloquially known, is also sometimes referred to as the Liberal Upside Down cake. It is often confused with the Fruit-Bottom cake which, though not all that it is cracked up to be, sells like proverbial hot cracks during Londonistan’s Gay Pride month. If you have the extreme good fortune to be in the UK capital during that festive month, do make sure to skip lickety-split down to London’s Soho, the capital’s LGBTQ geographical and moral-less centre, and treat yourself whilst there to a slice of the famous Navy Cake from Hello Sailor’s bun shop or a ‘once tried never forgotten’ Golden Rivet Muffin from the café El Bandido’s.
All of this is a very long way from Kaliningrad, I am pleased to say, and everybody else who lives there is also pleased to say. May it long remain that way.
Meanwhile, whilst you are waiting to have a cake named after you, if there is anything in this treatise on Russian and British cake ethics which you believe I haven’t covered, if you really feel that you must, jot down the one or two points that you think I might have missed and then consign your trunk of comments care of the cake in MacArthur Park . After all, ‘It took so long to bake it …’
A piece of trivia for you: Did you know that Kaliningrad does not have a Soho? That’s right, no Soho, but it does have a Bow-Wow, that is ‘dugs that bark like buggery’ (copyright expression, currently on loan from my Uncle Son).
Vintage sponge cake: I found this image at <a href="/ru/”https://freevintageillustrations.com/vintage-sponge-cake-illustration/?utm_source=freevintageillustrations&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=downloadbox”">Free Vintage Illustrations</a> / https://freevintageillustrations.com/vintage-sponge-cake-illustration/
Nursery Rhyme Baker’s Man: I found this image at <a href="/ru/”https://freevintageillustrations.com/pat-a-cake-nursery-rhyme-illustration/?utm_source=freevintageillustrations&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=downloadbox”">Free Vintage Illustrations</a> / https://freevintageillustrations.com/pat-a-cake-nursery-rhyme-illustration/
