It’s been my father in laws birthday the weekend before we arrived so he decided to have his traditional birthday bbq with the family the next weekend. 


I had forgotten what incredible cakes Manfreds aunt bakes. I mean all the woman in Manfreds family bake lovely cakes. But Tante Lisotte’s ones are by far the most impressive! I am absolutely confident that if her cakes were served at Louis Sergeant nobody would notice that it had been made by her and not the chef!

Here is what she made for Horst’s birthday: a passion fruit mango gateau!

At first I could not wait trying it but when I finally had a piece on my plate I got scared! What if the cake wouldn’t live up to its looks? What if it was only allright but not extraordinarily delicious? The cupcake syndrom (it does not matter if it tastes as long as the icing looks good!) took hold of me and I seriously had to force myself to take a bite. I closed my eyes and squinted.  In a second the promise of eating the most beautiful cake would just fall apart. But then… it wasn’t so bad! It was actually quite allright. Nice! Delicious! OMG- could it be that the cake tasted even better than it looked? It did! 

I spend the rest of the evening interviewing Lotte about the art of baking. Turns out it is a craft on its own. With a lot of similarities to other crafts: the love and time you invest in the process, the time you have invested in perfectionising the craft, the constant curiosity to try something new, getting inspired by someone else’s pattern/recipe and modifying it into something even better. And last but not least being admired for what you are making but nobody wants to pay for it.  

She is so passionate about her baking that she took part in bake off once and made it into the final on TV! To everyone who knows her and her cakes it was pretty much a no brainer that she would win but then she dissapointingly placed third with her “Baumkuchen” (“tree cake”, a cake that is baked in layers hence looks like annual rings in a tree- the passionfruit gateau has a bit of Baumkuchen in it if you look close!). The winning cake hat Rosemary in it and when the judge heard it contained a herb (unusual!) Lotte’s fate was decided. 

Still, I think she needs to collect some if her recipes, get her arty photograper son to take some decent pictures of her creations and send it to some publishers as the the world deserves a baking book edited by her!

At the end of the evening I tried to convince her to make a Pavlova. But she wasn’t too keen. I think its way too simple for her (“You can’t make much out of nothing!” Was her harsh and refreshingly honest comment about THE New Zealand cake). Manfred suggested she could take it to a whole new level and I won’t give up hope that she will give it a go after all!