1st Prize - A Year’s Supply of Cadbury’s Chocolate
Cadbury’s is - or was - a British Institution. So the take-over of Cadbury’s by Kraft Foods which has been in the news recently has not been well received, except by the shareholders. But for some extraordinary reason I suddenly craved a Cadbury’s Cream Egg or even a Box of Milk Tray - something I have absolutely not wanted to eat for decades. I wondered if there was a sudden surge in sales of all things Cadbury’s across the UK - a kind of nostalgia-fest? At the same time however, I had no corresponding urge to consume triangles of processed cheese and I am sure sales have remained resolutely static.
A love of Cadbury’s - now, of course, replaced by my adoration of Green & Black’s 70% cocoa solids - goes way back to my childhood. Aged 8, at boarding school where one could only dream of chocolate, I entered a national painting competition featured in a girls’ comic where the first prize was A Year’s Supply of Cadbury’s Chocolate. The painting had to be ‘A Portrait of Mother’. I had no portrait of my mother - and no opportunity to do one being stuck at school for the next 12 weeks. However, I rather prided myself on a portrait that I had done in the school holidays of our beautiful Jamaican babysitter, who’s day job was a bus conductress on the No.49. Splendid in her dark blue uniform, piped in red with the London Transport logo embroidered on her pocket, and still with the ticket franking machine on its leather strap strung across her ample chest, she sat patiently for me while I assembled my easel and got out my oil paints. She had two children of her own. She was a Mother. But she was not my Mother. Starving because of poor school meals, deprived of sweets because I had eaten them all in the first few days of term, I was desperate to win The Prize. I rolled up the canvas and posted it to Cadbury’s Bournville without another thought.
A few weeks later a letter arrived from the good Quakers of Cadbury’s. I had been awarded first prize! The prize consisted of an enormous parcel of everything Cadbury’s made - Diary Milk, Fruit & Nut,Turkish Delight, to name but a few. Every month a parcel would be sent to me. For a whole year. Plus a day at the Bournville factory with my Mother to view the prize winning entries, tour the factory with ‘chocolate tastings’, followed by a chocolate tea with Cadbury’s chocolate biscuits. Bliss.
I began to worry about the visit. My mother was middle-class and white. She would be wearing a mink coat, high heels and looking as glamourous as ever. What would she think of the portrait? What would the Chairman handing out the prizes make of it? Would they take the prize away from me? I didn’t deserve to win and my mother was very, very angry. I had won under false pretences and I felt so guilty. But the parcels kept coming and there was so much to enjoy, and as I was able to share with the other girls I became the most popular girl in the school - only for a year, of course. But I became addicted to chocolate for life.
Theo Hodges
Theo Hodges was born in Kent. After a degree in Graphic Design she joined J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency as an Art Director working on accounts such as Rowntrees, Kraft and The Butter Council. While she was at University in Perugia, Italy she started collecting recipes from friends and family. In 1980 she set up her own design agency: Theo Hodges Design Consultants. For many years when they were young Theo, her sister and six cousins used to spend vacations at her Grandmother’s Victorian vicarage in Kent. ‘The thing about remembering childhood’ she says, is ‘there’s a whole lot of oblivion, and then out of it something floats up, quite sharp and clear. Many of the meals I can still see vividly and various recipes of mine were originally from Granny’s kitchen. ‘The kitchen garden was stuffed with raspberries, huge red dessert gooseberries, strawberries, runner beans, peas and much more with the hens in a shed at the back. But Granny only ate chicken breast and runner beans, followed by raspberries and Jersey cream - and therefore so did we. When raspberries were out of season, and in those days the season was much shorter, Granny made Victoria sponge cakes sandwiched with cream and home-made raspberry jam. On this limited but delicious diet we all thrived’. Theo’s mother was an excellent cook as well, and had been taught by the house- keeper at their house in Mougins, South of France. And once rationing was withdrawn in England in 1952 and good, fresh ingredients became available again, she amassed an enormous number of recipes which has formed the basis for Theo’s collection of family desserts.