IMPERFECT OFFERINGS

I was up late the other night making a cake for Sammy's birthday. My friend Sammy was holding a Downton Abbey theme party for her friends and family. Given her love of vintage tea and cakes, the style of the Twenties and Thirties and all that is embodied by The Great British Bake Off, there would inevitably be a cake competition.

What emerged from the tin the night before, could only be described as a crumbling mess - a sort of soggy pudding with a crispy top. It was supposed to be a cherry-bakewell chocolate and almond cake. I thought those words together looked so succulent and mouthwateringly elegant, that whatever came out of the oven would almost have to force itself to be utterly delicious.

Well, it was hard work. When I tried to chop up the chocolate, it shot around the kitchen, ricocheting from the tiles like tasty shrapnel as the knife sliced into the breadboard. I hadn't softened it. In the end I just tipped the big chunks of chocolate into the mixer (where the sugar, eggs, milk and flour were already swirling) and held on to the thing while it shook itself around the worktop.

The cherries sank to the bottom as well. Have you ever tried to cut up cherries? The recipe simply said something like: halve the cherries and leave to rest in a tbsp of flour. It took ages trying to slice those squidgy little bandits in two. I'm sure I've seen Nigella or Delia or someone gently ease the little stone out of half a cherry and pinch it perfectly betwixt finger and thumb. What I created was a mess of cherries and a little pile of sticky stones. The chopping board looked like it belonged in a horror flick, and my fingers were stained a suspicious deep pink. After all that, the cherries still sank right to the bottom of the cake! I'm pretty sure most of them got left behind when I prized the ruins of the rest of the thing out of the tin.

Presentation is everything though, so I melted the rest of the chocolate, poured it on top and then sprinkled it with almond flakes. It looked terrible. The middle was sinking, the outside was falling apart and the uneven chocolate icing was like a terrible toupee on a loaf-shaped head. I sighed, knowing that it was what it was and it would have to do.

The next day, when I arrived, I felt extremely odd. Oh I was suitably dressed - suit, tie, waistcoat and pristine pocket square of course. I even had a gold pocket watch tucked away on a chain. The fine look was dramatically offset however, by me clutching a battered old biscuit tin.

"Where do the cakes go?" I asked someone, nervously.

"Oh. In the tea tent!" said they.

We found the tea tent - me and my biscuit tin and my soggy old cherry-bakewell chocolate and almond cake. And there before me, as I gulped with embarrassment inside the gazebo, was a selection of items that would honestly have been right at home in the nation's fanciest tea shops. There were intricately crafted, delicious-looking cakes, swirls of immaculate white icing and tiny hand-sculpted masterpieces of baking. There was perfect, sliceable carrot cake, there were sweet little cakes, an adorably elegantly symmetrical pavlova, and the most succulent of delights, glistening with pride and sugary perfection. And me with my tin.

I've been thinking about that. Actually in the end, it didn't really matter - not at all. Yet why is it that we so often can't resist comparing ourselves with other people? I'm not very good at baking or cooking or anything like that. So? I had a go. Who cares if it wasn't as beautiful or as well-crafted as other people's? It wasn't going to win any prizes, but actually, I reflected, that wasn't really the reason I had stayed up so late making it. Actually, I'd just wanted to feel like I'd been part of the day, and that in a small way I'd maybe help Sammy have a really great time.

That's the thing with imperfect offerings though, isn't it? It's not about how it stacks up against anybody else's effort or anybody else's talent. When it comes to worship, actually all our offerings are sort of imperfect - filthy rags held up as gifts to the maker of diamonds. Even the best of us have nothing to offer God. Somehow though, the point is that we give something of ourselves, and that something is as individual for all of us and as unique and as different as we are to each other. It's really daft to compare, isn't it? Even if you make a cake that would render Mary Berry speechless with wonder, and I make a cake that's a pile of crumbs and a pool of chocolate in a battered old biscuit tin, I'm quite OK with that. I think the Maker quite likes it too, you know.