What am I looking at? Is that a cake in the shape of a sausage roll, or a sausage roll in the shape of a cake?
Would either one of those answers be OK? The so-called sausage roll cake is exactly what it looks like: enormous slabs of sausage meat nestled between thick layers of pastry. In the shape of a cake.
Why?
A difficult question. The simple answer: it was a birthday surprise for Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s police minister, unveiled during his weekly briefing. It turns out there’s something worse than your colleagues forgetting your birthday: getting a sausage roll cake.
But really: why?
You need to know Hipkins has what he describes as a weakness for sausage rolls. In a Facebook post this week, he credited “police intelligence gathering” for the agency alighting on the perfect birthday gift, but it would hardly have taken a forensic investigation.
A Labour party colleague selected Hipkins in 2020 as the MP he’d least like to endure a Covid-19 lockdown with, on the somewhat judgmental basis that he “appears to eat nothing much more than sausage rolls and Diet Coke”.
In 2015, when parliament’s cafe said it would no longer serve the savoury treats before 10.30am for health and safety reasons, Hipkins considered “a rebellion outside the building” after a local newspaper urged him to intervene.
It’s worth noting that he was previously New Zealand’s health minister.
Is that why he looks so worried about the sausage roll cake?
The face he’s making appears to be more a kind of existential confusion.
“Who knew sausage roll cake is an actual thing?!” Hipkins wrote on Facebook, followed by the cry-laughing emoji.
That doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement.
Well, he did note the treat was one of the “upsides to working on your birthday”, and deemed it “delicious.” He later told a radio show that he “needed to have a little lie-down about lunchtime”.
What did New Zealanders make of it?
The “cake” was met with more curiosity than disgust online, which makes sense.
“No idea if this guy is cool or not but damn it I have to respect a sausage roll cake,” one Redditor wrote. “I’ve been trying to analyse what they did,” another mused.
Haven’t we all! Let’s get to the meat of this: where did the idea come from? Did an actual police officer bake it? How did they stick the layers together? Where’s the tomato sauce?
An online search for sausage roll cakes reveals recipes for making an oversized version of a regular sausage roll, but none for the lasagne-esque structure favoured by Hipkins’ mysterious benefactor. Perhaps it’s better that we never know.
I’m sensing a contender for Bake-Off’s next technical challenge. Wait – can it still be called a sausage roll if it’s flat?
Let’s not get hung up on labels.
