Angela Mollard: How Nigella Lawson’s Easter cake saved my family

Divorce hurts children, writes Angela Mollard. But they will continue to flourish if there are anchor points — like family traditions — they can hold on to.

It’s 20 years since he gave me the cookbook. A thick slab of a thing, it was simply titled Feast. To a young woman who’d waved goodbye to her 20s and was galloping through her 30s, this gift from my husband was a glorious conspiratorial handbook to a
grown-up life that lay ahead: Family traditions, easy dinner parties, weekend brunches and, children willing, cosy suppers for two.

But nothing captivated me as much as the photo of an Easter egg cake. It was exquisite. A crisp chocolatey nest filled with thick ganache and topped with tiny speckled Easter eggs in shades of soft pink, lilac and daffodil. It looked tricky but the author, domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, promised it would become a family favourite.

The first time I made it my daughters were aged four and one. I remember taking the cake out of the oven and being dismayed at how it caved in.

Don’t fret, instructed Nigella with characteristic bossiness, the cavity would be filled with chocolate cream.

I’ve never forgotten the wide-eyed look of my two little girls when I brought the cake to the table. I vowed it would become our tradition, our cake to be shared each Easter.

Nigella Lawson hard at work in the kitchen.

Today, as I fold the chocolate into the cream and scatter the speckled eggs — Aldi’s are the prettiest — the cake will look the same even if my family doesn’t. And that’s a good thing.

Because when I first separated from my husband, nine years ago this month, I thought these traditions would be lost in the fissures that replaced family life. The egg that was our family was cracked and it seemed everything that held my little tribe together was now broken.

All these years later I’m telling you this not to present my experience as some sort of Gwyneth Paltrow-style whitewashing of divorce, but to offer hope to all those who have cracked or are cracking.

The pandemic stomped its steel-capped boot through so much of family life, and as many emerge from the wreckage I know these few things to be true.

Divorce hurts children. They feel it. Probably for evermore. But they will continue to flourish if there are anchor points they can hold on to.

Mine needed those little traditions — the Easter egg cake, their dad reading The Night Before Christmas to them on Christmas Eve — more than ever before. At 22 and 19, they still do.

Lawson’s exquisite Easter egg cake, as baked and photographed by Angela Mollard.

A friend, a child of divorce, once told me that the thing that hurt most about her parents’ separation was confronting the fact that the love that made her no longer existed. I thought about that a lot.

After my children bore witness to one particularly bitter argument between myself and my ex, I reassessed. Was it more important to be right or was it more important that our children could enjoy some harmony between the people who once loved each other? It couldn’t be a pretence, but could it be a choice? Could I focus on the good person he was and is, rather than the difficulties which led to our demise?

I could and I did. He seemed to do likewise and a new kindness and respect grew quietly where the old love had faltered.

Only my children could tell you if this friendship of sorts offers them any comfort, but it certainly means we can all spend time together. Birthdays and graduations are stress-free and when the unexpected happens — like last week when our beloved 18-year-old cat, Toffee, needed to be put down while I was away — he was there.

Anecdotally, I see more fractured families operating this way, not because it is heroic but because lives are long, being caustic is corrosive, and the bitter Kramer vs Kramer narrative damages us all.

Another thing I’ve learnt is that few families are fully functional. The intact ones have ongoing issues that require careful navigation, however perfect the picture is on the box.

There is no “them” and “us”, just the hope that we are all, for our children’s sake, doing the best we can.

Finally, parenting expert Steve Biddulph once wrote that kids gain more from going back to the same simple holiday spot year after year than they do from jetting to fancy destinations. I think that’s true of traditions, which is why my ex and I spend Easter Sunday together.

This year we will join another family for the same coastal Easter egg hunt we’ve been doing since our children met in preschool. The dads will hide the eggs, the mums will pour tea from Thermoses, and these grown children will revel in a ritual they’ve enjoyed all their lives. Afterwards we’ll all have lunch — both mine and my ex’s partners (both understanding types) will be there — and I’ll serve our cake as I have every year.

When she published Feast in 2004, Nigella had lost her mother, sister and husband to cancer. This week she lost her dad.

As she’s said of her Easter cake, her children wouldn’t let her break the tradition even if she wanted to. It’s a reminder that even after loss, some things remain.

ANGELA LOVES

Cake forks: They’re from another era, but if you can pick up a set in an op shop, treat yourself because they turn afternoon tea into a ceremony.

Film: Antwone Fisher, starring Denzel Washington, was made 20 years ago but it holds up astonishingly well with themes that are even more resonant today.

Instagram: When I’m stuck at my desk and need to be reminded of how extraordinary the world is, I check out images from National Geographic on @natgeotv.