Jennifer sighed. "This is the sad part of my tale. You see, cakes and pastries are in volume four, and volume four was stolen many years ago by a dragon."
Maria looked up quickly. "A dragon? Maybe it was the one who stole my books, as well. But I could find you another copy in my library, perhaps. It has every book in the world."
Jennifer shook her head. "There is only one Gastronomicon. Volume four can never be replaced. And the sad thing is, you may well think this is a good sort of fruitcake, but volume four tells how to make Cut-And-Come-Again Cake, and that is... well, it's more than just the greatest fruitcake in the world. It may be the greatest food of any kind that there is. But nobody has tasted Cut-And-Come-Again Cake since the dragon stole the book, and what use is a cookbook to a dragon?"
My grandmother, Lucy Hall, used to make this cake. She called it Cut-And-Come-Again Cake. It's a kind of simnel cake, which is a kind of fruitcake. In the old days, people used to eat it at Eastertime, but I think it's good to eat at any time of year.