Will Tottenham Cake feature on the new series of Celebrity Bake Off
A new series of Celebrity Bake Off starts on Tuesday 9th March and the big question is clearly whether the proletarian patisserie known as the Tottenham cake will feature. It was last on the main Bake Off show in 2013.
It has featured in the Guardian this week(below) and it remains on sale in bakeries in North London although possibly not those near the Emirates stadium. There is of course no comparable Arsenal cake.
It may be a little sweet for modern tastes and chilli version might go down well.
Tottenham pudding as Martyn Day notes is not something for human consumption. Just as now during World War two weekly collections of food waste were made in the area. At that time they ended up at the Down Lane refuse site at Tottenham Hale (very close to my abode) where they were turned into animal food as part of the war effort
It is important not to confuse the school dinner offering Tottenham cake (Pass notes, 3 March) with Tottenham pudding, an industrially produced boil-up of waste fruit and vegetables for consumption by chickens and pigs.
Martyn Day
Twickenham, London
Guardian Letters 6th March
How did school dinner cake first become associated with school? That’s unclear, but the recipe bears more than a passing resemblance to Tottenham cake. Although Tottenham cake traditionally has pink icing, whereas school dinner cake is traditionally served with a weirdly thin, pink custard.
I presume Tottenham cake comes from London. From the early 20th-century bakery of the Quaker Henry Chalkley, to be precise. The cake was handed out free to schoolchildren when Tottenham Hotspur first won the FA Cup in 1901.
Guardian 3rd March PassNotes
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