The incredible power of cake

How eating together helps us stay connected and a delectable recipe for peach, rose and vanilla cake

I’ve been riveted by a series on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme about Sheila Seleoane, a woman who died and lay undisturbed in her south London flat for two-and-a-half years before her body was found. No-one had noticed the 58-year-old missing. Efforts to raise the alarm had failed. It was an utterly horrible tale that the coroner found ‘difficult to comprehend’.

I bet you didn’t expect an opening paragraph like that in a newsletter ostensibly about cake, did you? But before I dive into the buttercream (I will) and before you turn the page, let me explain.

Sheila Seleoane’s story reminded me of the final newspaper article I wrote before I left Australia almost thirty years ago. It was about a woman found dead on her kitchen floor in an inner-city suburb of Sydney. She’d been there for three years without being reported missing or an alarm being raised. The postman had just continued to stuff mail through her door. The neighbours mowed her lawn and watched the gas and water get cut off, assuming she’d moved to the country or gone to hospital.

Eventually, a policeman hacked his way through an overgrown side garden and used a torch to peer in her back window. And there she was, lying on the floor dressed in a cardigan and track suit pants, her breakfast bowl and a carton of milk still sitting on the kitchen worktop.

The story made the front page and Sydney hung its head in shame. And because these were the dark ages (1993) and quickly accessed computer records didn’t exist yet, for a time no-one knew who this woman was. My editor suggested we take an artist from the art department (do newspapers still have these?) to talk to neighbours. And from their descriptions of what the woman looked like, he produced a sketch of her.

Soon, a long-lost relative recognised the likeness and came forward with details about the woman, and a photograph of her. Suddenly, she wasn’t just a cipher for suburban isolation and neglect, but a real person with a face and a life lived and a name: Mavis Raines. Somehow, Mavis had slipped off the face of the earth and no-one had noticed.

When my children were young (but old enough) I told them this story, which they found ghoulish and fascinating and sad. One of them wondered whether a house in the next street with an overgrown garden might be concealing a dead person who’d been lonely, too.

I told them I doubted that very much but they wanted to do something, so we simply Googled, how can we help lonely old people? And it turned out that organisations existed for this very purpose, and so we got involved with Re-engage (formerly called Contact the Elderly). It’s a charity set up to tackle social isolation by pairing volunteers with lonely people, through the medium of afternoon tea.

Since then, once or twice a year, volunteer drivers collect six or seven older folk - mostly in their 80s and 90s - and bring them to our house for lots tea and cake. They shuffle through the door on the dot of 4.15pm, clattering their walking sticks and frames and smelling of talc, and then they sit down around the kitchen table to eat and chat.

Almost all of the attendees are women, mostly widows. They have sharp appetites, no food intolerances and an insatiable thirst for hot cups of tea. They devour stacks of soft white bread sandwiches that I cut the crusts off – smoked salmon, ham and egg. Nigella’s buttermilk scones are always a winner (and in my book it’s the only recipe that produces the stated numbers of scones in a batch).  There might be trifle, too.

By the time we get to cake, the pace of eating has generally slowed (a bit) and the ladies start to chat and tell their stories. As the fabulous New York Times food writer Tejal Rao once observed: “When a cake comes out, there’s a communal surge in appetite and spirits”. This is truth.

I have many fond memories of the ladies who’ve come to tea over the years. Gloria, 81, lived in sheltered accommodation and had not a single blood relative left in the world. Sunday, she said, was the hardest day of all. Marjory, 85, worked in a hat factory when she was girl and now had a boyfriend with whom she was about to go on holidays to Wales. Mavis had children, but they lived far away and never came to see her. Mary used to work at the Foreign Office but no details of her role there would pass her official-secrets-act-sealed lips. Audrey, 94, lived alone, save for a talking parrot.

Brenda let us tease out the story of how she met her husband during the war. Her father, a barber, used to cut the hair of German Prisoners of War billeted on a nearby farm. At the age of 15, she fell madly in love with one of them. It would be several years before they could marry, but they did, and lived happily for decades until he passed away.

I suppose the point of this sad-happy newsletter is that perhaps you might consider having some old folk around for tea, too. On April 30, BBC1 will broadcast a 10-minute programme about Re-engage as part of its monthly Lifeline appeal. The charity really does help people stay connected and it might even stop someone slipping horribly and tragically through the net. And they’re always seeking volunteers.

On my part, these teas are no great sacrifice or act of generosity. In fact, if you love feeding people and having a chat as much as I do, they’re a joy to host. Just be sure to make enough cake – attendees have heartier appetites than you might think. And they like to take an extra slice home with them.

Recipe and images first appeared in Liz Earle Wellbeing magazine, July 2018.

Vanilla, peach and rose cake

This beautiful cake is celebratory but also simple to make, and the perfect springtime afternoon tea.

Vanilla Victoria sponge with peach and rose

SERVES 8-12

250g unsalted butter 
250g caster sugar
4 large eggs
250g self-raising flour
1 vanilla pod, seeds
2 tbsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk, plus a splash more if needed
Sea salt

FOR THE FILLING
150g peach jam
1⁄4 tsp rosewater
250g mascarpone
100g crème fraîche
2 tbsp icing sugar
1 vanilla pod, seeds
Icing sugar, sifted, for dusting
1 large ripe peach, peeled and sliced

TO DECORATE
Handful of rose petals
50g pistachio slivers

1 Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350°F/gas mark 4. Butter and line two 20cm loose-bottomed cake tins with baking paper. Beat the butter and sugar together with electric beaters, scraping down the bowl now and then, until very pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs a little at a time, adding some of the flour when the batter starts to curdle. Add the vanilla seeds and vanilla extract, and beat for two more minutes.

2 Bit by bit, sift in the remaining flour, stirring with a wooden spoon until just combined; try not to overbeat. Add a pinch of salt and then the milk – you’re aiming for batter that falls softly off the spoon, so add more milk if necessary.

3 Divide evenly between the prepared cake tins and bake for 25 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tins for five minutes and then turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely.

4 To assemble, whisk together the mascarpone, crème fraiche, icing sugar and vanilla seeds. Make sure the cakes are cooled, then spread the mixture on top
of the bottom cake. Mix the jam with the rosewater and spread evenly over the bottom of the top cake. Place that cake on top of the bottom cake.

5 To decorate, dust over some icing sugar, then scatter the pistachio slivers and rose petals over the top.