If I were ever to write a book about my travels it would have to be called "Travels with My Sweet Tooth". When planning a trip, I don't dream about the pho or the curries or the dumplings but the tearooms, cake parlours and old-fashioned sweetie shops in country villages. While Vienna, Paris and Budapest are great cities for desserts and fine pastries, it's the simpler fare I crave, what I suppose is known as "nursery" food in the great British tradition of the bake-off.
It's all about the cakes for me. Even before I make a beeline for the local market in any place I visit, I plot a pitstop to a tearoom or a cafe with cakes. I'm not after chocolate brownies or other introduced species of sweets, but plain old Victoria sandwiches, caraway seed cakes, lemon drizzle cakes and big, fluffy scones with dobs of jam and cream.
The anti-sugar brigade will be horrified by this. For them, anything sweetened is abhorrent, including fruit. While I've come round to thinking it's best to avoid processed food and hidden sugars, I find sweet treats one of the great pleasures of life, and if that treat is made with fresh eggs and butter and cream, all the better.
People on paleo diets can skip the following.
On a trip to the UK earlier this year, I tried a kind of Pavlov experiment on myself, watching Damon Gameau's excellent That Sugar Film in-flight, thinking it might deter me from the sugar binge that was about to unfold as I navigated the excellent English cake shops and hotel afternoon tea offerings. You will not be surprised to hear it didn't have too much effect, even though I am now perpetually worried about droopy "sugar face".
On that trip I discovered more "evil" – real currant-studded Eccles cakes and a particularly wicked chocolate-coated mint slab known as Kendal Mint Cake, a speciality of the Lake District.
But I have discovered that it is Ireland, in particular, that takes the cake. Boy, can the Irish bake! I've never found better cakes anywhere, at least in the sense of classic baking that is homely but also a real art.
Just a few weeks ago, travelling The Wild Atlantic Way, the gorgeous west coast of Ireland, I stumbled on the tearoom of my dreams.
An Féar Gorta Tea and Garden Rooms can be found in a stone cottage right on the waterfront at Ballyvaughan, which is less than an hour's drive south of Galway in County Clare. This village defines "picturesque" with a lovely harbour and rows of pretty, whitewashed cottages (which can be rented.)
"An féar gorta" is the name of a fairy grass that is supposed to cause weakness and hunger when trodden on – so be warned and come with an appetite. Inside, there's a fire in the hearth and dressers full of picturesque mismatched cups and saucers. There's a dining room at the back, planted with geranium, jasmine and passionfruit, which opens onto a beautiful walled cottage garden.
But, oh my goodness, those cakes! On a large refectory table set by an open fire, spreads of more than a dozen large cakes were laid out, all made with fresh eggs and local ingredients.
On the morning we visited, baker Jane O'Donoghue had produced all by herself a coffee sponge, a coffee and walnut torte, a chocolate cake, a lemon and coconut cake, a Bakewell Tart filled with damson plums, a passionfruit flan, a pear cake, huge scones served with apricot and almond jam, giant meringues with fresh berries and a few other enticing offerings including the lemon sponge I chose, which was filled with lemon curd and runny icing. Beyond.
Having demolished my cake and one of my husband's scones, I wondered if it was too greedy to return for afternoon tea. Or just settle in for the whole day, for that matter. In which case I would have had the beef and Guinness potato pie for lunch, to balance out the sugar.
My slender husband is not so keen on the sweet stuff, unless it's chocolate (and chocolate shops are another story) so whenever possible when travelling I like to meet up with friends who are connoisseurs of good baking, so we can sample more. (I'm talking about you, Saw Choo and John.)
Nutritionists may frown, but let us eat cake.
