Having your Russian cake and eating it too.

We've just been staying with my parents, and as an Easter gift I took not only a set of decorated wooden eggs, but a Russian Easter Cake for my mother.

A word about Russian patisserie; it looks great. It's all pretty and squirly and sparkly and mouthwatering; in short, a feast for the eye. There's just one problem; it tastes - well, honestly? Rubbish. Dry, bland, boring. To a family that likes cake, majorly disappointing, in other words. We discovered this over two years ago when, shortly after we moved to Moscow, we bought a birthday cake for Boy #2 and cut through the crisp, glossy dark chocolate shell on the outside to find what was essentially a big marshmallow (but without a marshmallow's redeeming feature - yumminess) inside.

So when I handed the Easter cake over to my mother, I warned her that it was 'for display purposes only' and that she could eat it at her peril.

Of course, that's what she tried to do (she is my mother, after all), but after one bite gave up in disgust at the sawdust-like contents. Later that day both my sister and Boy #1 were with me when Mum mentioned that she had tried the cake and didn't like it. Unsurprised, I reminded her that Russian cakes are all style and no substance and this (I pause here to wipe a proud tear from my eye) is what my son then said.

"You see, Gran, Russian cakes are a bit like girls. Just because they look all pretty on the outside, it doesn't mean that that's how they are inside. A girl might look beautiful but that doesn't mean she's a nice person inside. How a person or a cake looks doesn't really mean you can tell what they're actually like."

I looked at my sister. My sister looked at me. And I only just managed to avoid high-kicking across the room and saying 'My work here is done'...