Don't Sweat the Aubergine

sieve; and any airiness you give to the flour now will be lost when you stir it into the batter.
    5 • Separating an egg . Crack the egg on the edge of a bowl, and allow the white to pour in. Gently, with your hand held over the bowl and your fingers straight, tip the yolk on to your fingers, opening them slightly to allow further white to slip through. Moving the yolk from hand to hand can encourage this process. (I got this technique from the opening sequence of a TV biopic of Elizabeth David.)
    6 • Whisking whites . Try to avoid letting any trace of yolk creep into the egg white. Don’t add salt or, despite what some experts recommend, lemon juice or vinegar: they soften egg whites.
    I use a hand-held whisk, feeling that, in spite of the work involved, it enables me more accurately to judge the progress of the foam.
    Use a large bowl, and tip it towards you, so that the whisk gets access to as much egg white as possible. You should stop beating when the whisk, lifted from the foam, creates peaks , which do not subside. It’s tempting to carry on, just to make sure you’ve got the right consistency. Resist. Further beating causes the peak stage rapidly to be succeeded by collapse.
    7 • Dropping the cake . In
The Science of Cooking
, Peter Barham offers the bizarre recommendation that, on removing the cake from the oven, you drop it from a height of about 30cm on to a hard surface. (An average ruler is about 30cm long.) The theory is this: as a cake cools, the air bubbles in it deflate, like collapsing balloons. Dropping the cake allows some of the bubbles to break, letting in air, which sustains the structure.
    8 • Turning out . Some recipes recommend that you wait 5 minutes, just long enough for the cake to contract from the side of the tin, before turning it out on to a wire rack. If you do this, place the cake top-side (the firmer one) down. I find that bits of cake stick to the rack anyway, and I usually allow the cake to cool in the tin.
    9 • Zesting . I scrape the lemon against the finest mesh on my cheese grater, and try to grate only the skin: the white pith underneath is bitter.
BASIC SPONGE
    This sponge does contain a certain amount of gluten, which you develop when you blend the flour with the sugar and butter, and when you stir in the eggs. If you have ever handled bread dough, which has a lot of gluten, you’ll know that it has an elastic quality. Here, that elasticity maintains the structure of the cake as the air bubbles expand. If the structure were to break and the bubbles to pop, the cake would collapse. The texture of the cake is, nevertheless, foamy.
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    100g self-raising flour (or plain flour, plus 1 tsp baking powder)
    100g caster sugar
    100g softened butter
    1 tsp vanilla essence (optional)
    2 eggs, beaten
    Preheat your oven to gas mark 4/180°C. Put in a baking sheet.
    Line and grease a 20cm springform cake tin. 2
    In a food processor, blend the flour, sugar and butter, in short pulses, until you have a stodgy mass. Tip the mixture into a bowl, and stir in the vanilla (if using – I like it, but you may prefer less, or none at all) and a portion of the egg. Keep adding egg until you have a gloopy batter; it should drop off a spoon, but reluctantly. Don’t feel obliged to use all the egg; but, if you have done so before you get to the gloopy stage, add a little milk too.
    Tip the batter into the cake tin, spread it out and level the surface, and put the tin into the oven on top of the baking sheet, which helps to convey the heat. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until an inserted skewer emerges clean.
    Drop the cake tin from a height of about 30cm on to a hard surface (I hope the spring is secure). 7 Allow the cake to cool before turning it out. 8 I keep it in greaseproof paper, wrapped inside foil.
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VARIATIONS
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    Add the zest of a lemon, or of an orange, to the mix. And/or poppy seeds. Or any other dry flavourings.
    Make a sandwich: Double the ingredients, and divide the batter between two tins, baking the layers side by side.
    Fillings . You might go for a cream tea theme, with a layer of jam topped by whipped cream. Or try lemon curd, from
Geraldine Holt’s Cakes:
1 lemon; 60g caster sugar; 1/4 tsp cornflour; 1 egg; 30g butter. Use a small bowl that will rest in a saucepan of simmering water without the base touching the water’s surface. Grate in the lemon zest, 9 and add the juice too, along with the sugar, cornflour and egg. Cook the mixture,