Charity? Not an incredibly capitalist concept is it? In a world becoming increasingly out for itself, what part does charity play? For the last few years the tabloid journalists have not subsided in banging on about ‘The biggest recession of 100 years!’. Thankfully like an idiot’s impersonation of a ghost (shaking hands out and cooing “oooooooooooo” in a wavy voice), they haven’t managed to put the willies up anyone as they intended. Ironic, that in order to sell newspapers, their strategy was to cause widespread panic by claiming people weren’t buying and you shouldn’t be either.

Now, obviously I can’t claim the recession was all down to tabloid newspapers (or all newspapers for that matter). It was mainly due to more idiotic people borrowing money they couldn’t afford to pay back because of the ‘got to have it now’ culture we blindly bathe in. That, as well as the arguably more idiotic decisions to give these people money they couldn’t afford to pay back. The first group are a simple people, tricked by an amalgamation of media into craving a life they don’t need, and don’t strictly want. The second group however, really should know better. Why did they not know what would happen. It’s like enticing a 7-foot hairy beast into a bear trap, forgetting to step out of the trap first.

You’d assume that the charities would be the first to feel the strain in recession. Perhaps the assumption is correct, perhaps not. But if you’re putting your bank statement on a New Year Detox diet, needing to shave anything from a couple, to thousands of pounds (sterling) from the monthly thriller, what’s the first thing to go? Shoes? Massages? Cocaine? Booze? Or however much you commonly give to any kind of charity? Money constantly packing its bags without warning, and leaving you with no forwarding address, no phone call. Not even a rushed letter on the back of a FINAL REPAYMENT envelope.

The world seems to have an ever increasingly twisted view of itself as there must now be some new natural disaster for everyone to get upset and ‘We must help all we can’ pent up about every couple of months. The latest subject on the collective tongue of any bog-standard London wine bar, is Haiti. There’s always some kind of disaster fund to give to these days. We may be in recession, but you’ve got to do your bit eh? Who would you be if you didn’t? Exactly. That’s why we give to charity! It’s all a weak attempt to conceal and forget about who we all really are. Cheap, tight fisted, penny pinching, mean old bastards. So we give, we donate, we pledge, and we contribute. Contribute without a moment’s thought. For that moment would cause enough self-hatred to send us spiralling into an orgy of shame.

Partly because the company I work for is a charity itself, and partly because we just bloody love cake. It was decided (by one person, and just wordlessly agreed by the rest) to have a bake sale to raise some funds for the Haiti appeal. For the full week before hand, it was all that could be talked about… coming to a fore of flour based one-upmanship in the pub on Friday afternoon.  After asking a colleague if she would be treating us to her baking prowess the following week, she foolishly gave away her plan. She would bake a two-storey sponge, in the shape of the company logo (a hexagon). With the logo written in icing sugar on top.

Offended that it was better than anything I could think of doing myself, I foolishly, not so much as ‘upped’ the bar, as attached it to the next space shuttle before launch. Possibly drunk on excitement for the challenge, and possibly just drunk, I bravely and gallantly exclaimed that I would be baking a cake… in the shape of… a pencil! Yes, my keyboard does not deceive, you read correctly. A cake, in the shape of a pencil! ‘How is this possible?’ I imagine you to think. Well that’s really not important. A small obstacle that doesn’t have to be considered at this point in time. I’m far too busy basking in the glory of colleague awe from a claim so daring and so preposterous that I was laughed out of the room.

The reality of the cake was actually very simple (in theory). I would bake two sponges in little stumpy bread tins. Cut a dry, riverbed from the middle of each and fill with chocolate icing (lead). Stick the two sides together, and sharpen one end (like a pencil). Cut the sides down from square to hexagon, cover Frankenstein’s desert in marzipan from the waist down, and pop a few chocolate buttons on top. Easy.

Not quite. The dual sponge plan was abandoned early for fear of falling apart, instead a 3 layer tiered option was favoured. Three hexagoned layers, stacked. Each with a hole cut out and filled with ‘lead’, the third sharpened into a point, with the entire beastlyman covered in marzipan. Problems with the plan: In favour of a more natural ‘wooden pencil’ look, I used wholemeal flour, making the sponge much grainier and harder to shape. This meant the actual hexagons were less than straight, making the whole thing lean to one side like a homosexual sharing a urinal with David Beckham. It was so bumpy, with the wrapped coat of marzipan the thing looked like a bag of car radios hidden in a chav’s yellow puffer jacket.

But hey… once it was out, onto a plate, cleaned up a bit and presented with the others. It looked bloody special, still easily recognisable (unprompted) as a pencil.

So in the end, roughly £10 was spent on slices of the pencil cake, making up a fair proportion of the £120 raised overall. Not content with doing its bit for the one charity, the selflessly hardworking pencil cake caused quite the stir on Twitter, providing priceless marketing for the company (charity) itself.

With the recession officially over, there’s still a long long way to go back to normality, possibly a long and bumpy road for all the charities of the world, however as long this country continues to produce creative, outside the cake-box bakers, I’ve got a funny feeling we’ll be all right.

Or has all the sugar simply given me diabetes?