I have never been able to figure out whether coffee cake is meant to be enjoyed with coffee, or enjoyed as an alternative to coffee washed down with a cup of tea by people who don’t like to drink coffee and also don’t like to eat tea cakes, or consumed but not necessarily enjoyed in liquidised form by the infirm, or not consumed at all and just admired as a concept, or enjoyed as a standalone beverage replacement, in which case surely you’d be wise to at least have a glass of tap water close to hand in case you choke.
That last option, while admittedly relatively minimalistic, still seems a little extravagant. Now, I haven’t looked up the statistics, and you might argue that these things are best left to the experts, but let us assume that ten thousand servings of coffee cake are consumed daily nationwide and that, of those, seven hundred and eighty-four result in fatal choking in instances where a pre-poured beverage is not close to hand.
That leaves eight thousand, two hundred and sixteen servings of, on the face of it, medically unnecessary tap water. However, let’s be reasonable and assume that forty percent of diners will be genuinely thirsty and drink the water regardless, and that another ten to fifteen per-cent will take a number of nervous sips just out of some sort of guilt and / or perceived obligation because they are occupying the much sought-after big sofa in an upmarket coffee shop in which you are pretty much required by law to be drinking coffee, even if you were just hungry and had a hankering, as some of you foreigners call it, for something that tastes like coffee but fills the solids compartment rather than the liquids compartment.
Incidentally, the only reason people go nuts for those couches is because they’ve convinced themselves that one day they’re going to find a load of cash between the cushions that will balance out all the money they’ve squandered on bottled tap-water and dry coffee cake over the years. It’s pretty much legalised illegal gambling, and it’s happening right in front of our faces in every shopping mall in the western world. It is very telling that McDonald’s, who serve a far more down-to-earth, honest, hardworking clientele, have always had contiguous moulded plastic seating with no gaps. Although they do still screw the chairs to the floor.
The only other possibility I can think of (regarding the coffee cake Market) is that maybe it’s like Carat Cake, whereby it isn’t really made from carats of gold, it’s just called that because somebody mistyped “carrot”, and it auto-corrected to “carat”. But that doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. It’s not like your average consumer of cake would have a hankering for either carat or carrots, or in any case expect such a hankering to be resolved by eating cake. And besides, unless I’m greatly mistaken it’s actually called carrot cake, and not carat cake, so my point is moot.
And while I’m on the subject, that word “hankering” just reminds me of that disgusting Mr Hanky character from South Park, and does nothing for the appetitite. The producers would be well-advised to consider licensing him to SlimFast. (Assuming they want him)
In conclusion, there is literally a coffee cake on a coffee table five feet from me as I type this on a device that contains a camera, and still I’m going to use an archive photo of one of our cats as the illustration.
2019 – First posted on Facebook
**** Next time: Coffee tables ****
