Cake Today, Scone Tomorrow

by Sarah Grant, 2 Dec 2008

Sold on the promise of cake I headed into the city centre last Friday afternoon to see the BTW Cart High Tea Event in the Victorian Market. The artistic team are currently working on a commission to create new entrances for the market and as part of the process, there are several unique events planned. This was the first hence everyone was intrigued to experience….

Like some kind of sugar-enthused Pied Piper, I swooped into the cities ICA [Inverness City Advertiser] magazine office on Friday 21st Nov and enticed the four guys in the team to follow me on my pastry procession to the market.

"Come on guys – there is CAKE, cake, cake, cake, cake. LOTS OF CAKE".

Now generally you should NOT [are you listening kids?] accept invites from strange people who promise you sweets or cake but as I’m a familiar face and ICA team have promoted many of IOTA projects, they were not (or so we all thought) in much danger………. How wrong can you be?

So off we went….

Entering the Victorian Market, we could see artists Nicola Atkinson and Hanna Tuulikki busily running around in their High Tea branded aprons looking like mother ants shuffling cake after cake onto the long (and very much public)dining table running through the centre of shopping arcade. Noting multiple table settings and empty seats, it quickly became apparent that this was going to be, unbeknownst to us, a participatory event! Our plan of rocking up to the event, helping ourselves to a plateful of cake and lurking behind the scenes scoffing our faces quickly dissipated when we were met by apron-clad helpers who ushered us to our seats.

We sat down and tried to make sense of the fine china tea-set in front of us, having been cultured into a society only accustomed to ‘coffee-to-go’ paper cups.

How do you use a saucer?!

Pour tea out of a what?!

At this point some, elderly ladies who were in the market shopping – true to form – had sniffed out that cake was being served and sat down opposite us. Masking my fit of uncontrollable laughter, I looked down the table to see the four guys from ICA looking fairly startled about what was going on as they were formally presented with slices of strawberry cream cake and tried to fit their male fingers into dainty little fine china tea-cups. A somewhat camp scenario for four cool music/journos! Each of these guys sat facing a gentile retired dining companion and couldn’t help thinking this was a kind of bizarre speed-dating event for Sugar-Grannies! Not bursting into giggles was almost impossible! At the same time, though, was really great to see such an unlikely mix of folk taking part in this special event and conversing over a nice cup of tea and cake.

And so we started to eat…..and we ate LOTS of cake………

Finnish Strawberry cake, Ginger cake, Carrot cake and even Courgette cake [which was surprisingly yummy!]….mmmm those cakes were good. We even were sung to about the delights of cake while we dined. Nicola harped like some kind of ‘cake-angel’ about the virtues of cake as Hanna accompanied the song on xylophone.

A rather surreal experience, like some kind of Invernesian Mad Hatters’ Tea Party.

Could this be the start of more cake related events?

Please?