Cleone - CLEONE Leg 22A Day 7 - Mandy's Birthday

Yesterday (24^th January) we celebrated Mandy's xx^th Birthday.

 

"I prefer Chocolate to Lemon Cake" said Mandy, to nobody at all and apropos nothing in particular.  Jenni and the Skipper exchanged winks, and he quietly put away the Lemon Cake mixture and replaced it with a Chocolate one.  Both were of Mrs Crocker's finest, so despite the missing packets, Alexander Anderson's carefully written but almost indecipherable (what did all that expensive education achieve?) instructions applied equally; all that was needed was a mixing bowl, an egg, three-quarters of a cup of milk, some elbow grease and a suitable baking tin.  Well we had all of that, but unless you know what measure "a cup" is, you might as well be sitting on Mars. 

A lot of head-scratching went on - we nearly had to consult Mandy or the assembled World ARC fleet, which would have really given the game away.  Inspired, the Skipper reached for the handy calibrated measuring tin.  There it was, a cup equals half of a pint; so three-quarters of a cup is three-quarters of a half of a pint, which is three eighths of a pint.  But all our measuring jugs are in millilitres, and if you think my maths goes that far, well forget it. 

So the Skipper broke and egg and slopped in milk and stirred the mixture till it was the consistency of thickish (non-clotted) cream, poured it into a carefully measured baking tin.  But the maths was not finished; is a 20cm by 20cm baking tin the same size as a 20cm round tin?  And it said "bake xxx (ah, I've just got it, xxx=pan - Ed) for 25-40 mins".  Well thanks, Alexander, or to be fair, maybe thanks, Mrs Crocker.  That's a very big spread, and presumably the result is anything from a warm liquid goo to a black cinder smoking in a ruined baking tray, with a light, spongy, rich, succulent chocolate cake somewhere in between.  Well, you've got to hand it to the Skipper.  Working nimbly between Jenni's forays to the stove to produce a suitable birthday supper (delicious Pasta Carbonara), he lit up the oven, let it heat up for a few minutes and thrust the (carefully buttered) baking tray and its sacred contents into it, muttered a prayer or two and arbitrarily set the pinger.

 

By now it was gin and tonic time - we had even remembered to put both gin and tonic into the fridge the night before.  And thanks to St Helena, we had plenty of fresh lemons.  Eschewed only by Shayne in favour of beer, we all enjoyed our first (powerful - the Skipper did learn something from his Dad) G&T since Cape Town, with Jenni diving below every few minutes to check on supper's progress.  By now well into our second G&T, the Skipper eventually reacted to the insistent call of the pinger.  It was his turn to dive below, only to find that the oven had inadvertently been switched off, leaving the cake half cooked.  He compounded the error by opening the oven door to check - the cake promptly collapsed.  For the sake of decency, I will not report what was said next.  But the tale did have a happy ending; the meal was delicious, the cake was rescued and eaten as pudding with custard (but not until the proper birthday candles were successfully blown out in one breath), all the other World ARC boats gave Mandy best wishes over the radio, with Quasar V's rendition of the classical song being particularly appreciated, and Mandy got up for the two am watch as scheduled - after all, it was tomorrow and no longer her birthday by then.