In the days running up to the sale, Alice messaged several times to remind me to spread the word, because she was worried about Carla’s cakes. It was December 2015, the first Christmas bake sale at Alice’s new studio, which was also a “gentle opportunity” for cook, teacher and preserver Carla Tomasi to come into the centre of Rome (something she hadn’t been in the habit of for a number of years) to meet friends and to sell her preserves. It was Carla who made it clear that being involved in a collective bake sale was a big step for her after a reclusive time, and that she intended to make just a few things.
In the weeks running up to the sale, however, Carla started sending pictures of the fruit she had picked off the trees in her garden, and of the crates of blueberries that her partner had driven back to Rome from Poland. Then came the photographs of bubbling pans filled with red, orange, brown and pink, and of carefully sterilised jars arranged on clean tea towels. These were followed by images of upturned jars (this creates a good seal) – dozens and dozens of them – filled with apple, caramel and sage butter, mustard-yellow piccalilli, date and apple chutney, fig and onion marmalade, clementine marmalade, blueberry and thyme jam, spiced quince, plum and pomegranate chutney, and Indonesian cauliflower pickle. Carla also announced that she had made “a few” Christmas cakes as well, each one fed meticulously, and that she was considering baking a couple of sorts of biscuits. “A couple” turned out to be seven.
