A jubilee cake fit for a queen
By Naomi Gunasekara
"It was a dream come true," said Gertrude Nanayakkara glowing with delight. "I never thought that I would be able to make another cake for the Queen. But it was God's wish and I am so happy."

It had been a trying yet satisfying time for Ms. Nanayakkara, who went to London to present a cake to Queen Elizabeth on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of her reign. Ms. Nanayakkara's cake was one of the five cakes accepted by Buckingham Palace for the celebrations held early this month. "Everything turned out the way I wanted," she said showing me a heap of photographs taken during her fortnight's stay in London.

The rectangular cake had been presented at the Palace on May 31, 25 years after Ms. Nanayakkara's crown-shaped cake was given pride of place at the Royal Banquet held in May 1977 at the Queen's Silver Jubilee Celebrations.

In keeping with last time's recipe she baked a rectangular-shaped rich cake with a touch of brandy to add that regal flavour. "I took everything from here except the parchment and almond. The cake was baked here to save time but all the decorations were done in London," she said.

Arriving in London 12hrs later than the scheduled time, Ms. Nanayakkara had found the mirror that she had intended using as the base for the cake, shattered. Travelling on the same flight as Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe, she had not been allowed to carry the mirror with her due to security reasons. "We took a direct flight to avoid any hassle but had to spend 12hrs in Dubai. My grand-daughter was lucky, she was able see Dubai."

Having rested a day and purchased a new mirror, Ms. Nanayakkara had started work on her cake on Tuesday, May 28. The breakage of the mirror did not worry her for "I was able to get a better mirror in London." For the next three days, it was all hard work. "The cake was first covered with layers of almond and iced with creme icing," said Ms. Nanayakkara, who had made all her decorations with a little help from grand-daughter Marina. "She made the Lily of the Valley decorations and placed the buttons on the crown with a pair of tweezers."

"It was like an exhibition. My friends in Essex had informed their friends that I was doing a cake for the Queen and people kept on visiting us." The four corners of the cake were decorated with posies of English rose and Lily of the Valley. "At the top of the cake I placed the coronation crown with the two flags of Sri Lanka and England."
The 20-pound cake was also decorated with green, pink and creme icing. "I wanted to give the edges of the cake a lace finish but decided to have frills instead because lace icing melts easily." Her friends also helped deliver the cake at the Palace. "I kept a pillow on my lap and placed the cake on the pillow and Collins drove very carefully."

Andrew Farquharson, Assistant to the Master of the Household at Buckingham Palace met Ms. Nanayakkara outside the Palace and received the cake on behalf of the Queen. "They were very happy that Marina came because her father went to the Palace with me last time," said a content Ms. Nanayakkara who had been told that her roses "looked real" by the British media. "They asked me if the flags can be eaten and I told them everything except the jewels on the crown could be eaten." An expert in dress making, cookery and floral arrangements, Ms. Nanayakkara trained at the Hartley Smith Cake Decorators School, Hammersmith Art School and Constance Spry School in London. She also ran her own home-crafts institute, The Gertlyn School of Homecrafts here some years ago.

Know your diamonds

There is much more than sparkle to earth's
most precious stone.More than any other precious stone on earth, diamonds have for centuries fired the imagination of man. They have coloured history with legend, sparked battles, made fortunes, adorned some of the world's most famous and become indispensable to industry and technology.

But few who acknowledge the intrinsic value of a diamond know what makes it the undisputed queen of precious stones, or understand the mystique that surround these time and nature hardened atoms of carbon. This is particularly true of less affluent societies like Sri Lanka, where the abundant use of simulants and artificial variants in jewellery, and a penchant for coloured stones have limited diamonds (needlessly, promoters argue) to the realms of the rich and cosmopolitan.

What is a diamond, and what is behind its mystique? A diamond is the hardest gem known. It is formed by atoms of carbon linking together in a three-dimensional network under pressures of up to 60 kilobars at temperatures nearing 1300 Celsius about 200 kilometres below the earth's surface. Formed over millions of years in the earth's mantle, these stones finally arrive at the surface at speeds that reach several hundred kilometres per hour during volcanic eruptions. These are conditions that man and science cannot simulate.
Age, therefore, is certainly one of the factors that make diamonds valuable and give them their aura of power and mystery. The youngest diamonds are at least 990 million years old. Many date back 3200 million (3.2 Billion) years. There is something primeval and almost mythical about the process that created diamonds, linking these precious stones to the very creation of the planet we live on.

Hardness is another unique feature and one that carries with it a curious contradiction, for the very same carbon that 200 kilometres below the surface forms the hardest material known to man, also makes graphite - one of the softest substances - at the earth's surface.

Rarity is also obviously a yardstick of value. On average, a miner would have to mine 1000 kilograms or a ton of volcanic rock to get five grams of diamond, of which only 20 per cent, or one gram, would be of gem quality.

Clearly, no other precious stone large or small, of whatever hue, can claim to be as rich in history and as breath taking in formation as the diamond. Even the littlest stone represents the magnificence and awesome power of nature and the eternal toil of man for the riches of the earth.

Yet, man predictably has, with his growing mastery of science, sought to imitate the processes that create diamonds, bringing forth a cheaper synthetic namesake for the less discerning and for less exacting purposes. He cannot be blamed for this, for nature too has created several simulants that take the appearance of diamonds, such as Yttrium Aluminum Garnet (YAG), Gadolinium Gallium Garnet (GGG), Cubic Zircon (CZ) and Strontium Titanate.

This can confuse a layman buying jewellery, especially if the jeweller refers to a stone simply as a 'diamond' without specifying whether it is a genuine diamond, a synthetic diamond or a simulated diamond such as Cubic Zircon (sometimes called American diamond, and adding to the confusion!), which is commonly used in Sri Lanka.

Simulants can, however, be distinguished from diamonds through certain measurements and the observation of various properties such as Refractive Index (RI), the read-through effect, dispersion, hardness, specific gravity, reflective pattern and shadow patterns. However, a layman examining a diamond with the naked eye may not, unless he or she is familiar with the brilliance, fire and lustre of diamonds be able to be certain whether a stone is a diamond. Buyers of diamonds should therefore, ascertain whether the jeweller is equipped with a diamond thermal inertia tester (any reputed establishment would have one) also known as a diamond probe, which makes detection of a simulant easy. Familiarising oneself with the characteristics of a diamond like frosted girdles, bearding, remaining naturals and the sharp facets and superior polish that result from a diamond's hardness, can also help identify a diamond.

Synthetic diamonds on the other hand, are recognizable by their dull lustre and sometimes by the presence of flux inclusions like nickel, aluminum and iron. A synthetic diamond of five millimetres (half a carat) takes about a week to grow in a special apparatus that produces high pressure and high temperatures.

But proliferate as they might, synthetics and simulants will never take the sparkle away from diamonds. Diamonds have been used in jewellery, especially in engagement rings for more than six centuries, and the allure, romance and value of the stone has not dimmed. More than any other stone, a diamond makes a statement - of discernment, style, and commitment to the best life has to offer.

(Courtesy Diamond Cutters Limited, 20-24, Moderawila Industrial Estate, Panadura, Sri Lanka)

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